Well, its a wrap here at The Commercial Tenant Resource. It’s been a great 7 year run and we’ve had a lot of fun. But all good things must come to an end. Our research indicated that people wanted a shorter blog name and a streamlined look. And so we listened and acted!

We decided to start a fresh and cleaner blog at www.kenashleycre.com. We’re very excited and hope to see you in new digs very soon. Drop in for a beer and dinner when you can. Thanks for all the support over the years and here’s to a new chapter together!

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

“In general, if it’s coming from another person, it’s much more disturbing than when it’s coming from a machine,” he says, because, as social beings, humans are attuned to man-made sounds. He says overheard conversations, as well as high-pitched and intermittent noises, also draw attention away from tasks at hand.” www.npr.com

Here’s What Happened When I Gave Up Following The News For A Week“No matter what your reasons for being a news junkie, researchers are finding that consuming news on an hourly or even daily basis is bad for your brain. Studies have shown that an overabundance of news can make you depressed, anxious, and, for the most part, doesn’t usually provide you with the ability to actually change or influence anything being reported.” www.fastcompany.com

Want to Raise Resilient Kids? A Navy SEAL Says Always Do This“Over on Task and Purpose (a site for members of the U.S. military) and Fatherly (a site for–well, fathers), a former U.S. Navy SEAL named Eric Greitens (now a candidate for Missouri governor, by the way) shared his tips for raising children to be more resilient–rules that also apply to anyone who wants to increase their mental toughness.” www.inc.com

“Teach your children early not to pass the blame or make excuses, but to take respon­sibili­ty for their actions”

Ten Questions To Ask When The Headhunter Calls“Because it is easy to start a recruiting business or start making calls as the newest member of a commission-only recruiting firm, there are more unprofessional and impolite recruiters than polite and professional ones.These 10 questions will help you determine whether a recruiter who contacts you is worth your time and energy, or not.” www.forbes.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How to Steer Clear of Office Gossip“Staying above the fray sends the right management message: This isn’t the sort of thing we should all be spending company time on. As a manager you’ll never go wrong projecting an image of a fair person who’s all business. There are far worse reputations to have.” www.hbr.com

Big-Box Warehouse Sector Breaks Records in Demand, New Construction“This is happening because of the incredibly fast shift in demand for e-commerce; this has never happened before in the supply chain,” he says. “Absorption continues to outpace new construction, and while some retailers are starting to be able to compete with Amazon, there are others that are just getting started on their e-commerce strategies. Companies are becoming more adept, and investment is shifting away from stores to the distribution centers.” www.nrei.com

Industrial absorption continues to outpace new constr­uction­, and while some..are starting to be able to compete with AMZN, there are others that are just getting started on their e-commerce strategies #cre

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Why the Paperless Office Is Finally on Its Way“To say we haven’t gotten the paperless office so far isn’t to say we won’t. It is always dangerous to say “this time it’s different,” but this time it just might be. For the first time in history, there is a steady decline of about 1% to 2% a year in office use of paper. Add in the dip in use during the most recent recession, and as of 2016, we are already 10% below the peak of the number of pages produced by office printing and copying in 2007.” www.hbr.com

How WD-40 Created a Learning-Obsessed Company Culture“WD-40 is an unlikely setting for such a learning-obsessed culture. It is hardly a glamorous brand, but it is iconic in its own way. Almost anybody who works on cars, or does home repairs, or just wants to get rid of a squeak or some rust, has one of those bright blue-and-yellow cans in their garage or under their sink. In fact, when Garry Ridge took over, WD-40’s flagship offering was used in four of five American households and in virtually every mine, factory, and construction site in the country.” www.hbr.com

It is a story playing out across Silicon Valley, where restaurateurs say that staying afloat is a daily battle with rising rents, high local fees and acute labor shortages. And tech behemoths like Apple, Facebook and Google are hiring away their best line cooks, dishwashers and servers with wages, benefits and perks that restaurant owners simply cannot match.” www.nytimes.com

Big-Box Warehouse Sector Breaks Records in Demand, New Construction“This is happening because of the incredibly fast shift in demand for e-commerce; this has never happened before in the supply chain,” he says. “Absorption continues to outpace new construction, and while some retailers are starting to be able to compete with Amazon, there are others that are just getting started on their e-commerce strategies. Companies are becoming more adept, and investment is shifting away from stores to the distribution centers.” www.nrei.com

Industrial absorption continues to outpace new constr­uction­, and while some..are starting to be able to compete with AMZN, there are others that are just getting started on their e-commerce strategies #cre

Fully Autonomous Robots: The Warehouse Workers of the Near Future“When Target Corp. decided to revamp one of its biggest California distribution centers, it had a choice. It could build a new warehouse, it could install established technologies for picking products off shelves or it could take a risk on a new breed of robots from a reclusive billionaire.

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Virtual and Augmented Reality Will Reshape Retail“Virtual reality (VR), along with its sister technology augmented reality (AR), offers retailers the opportunity to transform how people shop. One customer might try on shirts without having to travel to the store. Another might order furniture on the spot, confident that it’s right for the house. Applications using either technology stand to eliminate customer pain points, elevate customer service, and create a differentiated, personalized customer experience. The successful incorporation of VR and AR into retail models also has the potential to vastly change the way retailers are thinking about stores of the future.” www.hbr.com

The answer is evident in the outpouring of affection that residents here have showered on the Atlanta BeltLine, which aims to convert 22 miles of mostly disused railway beds circling the city’s urban core into a biking and pedestrian loop, a new streetcar line, and a staggeringly ambitious engine of urban revitalization.” www.nytimes.com

Big-Box Warehouse Sector Breaks Records in Demand, New Construction“This is happening because of the incredibly fast shift in demand for e-commerce; this has never happened before in the supply chain,” he says. “Absorption continues to outpace new construction, and while some retailers are starting to be able to compete with Amazon, there are others that are just getting started on their e-commerce strategies. Companies are becoming more adept, and investment is shifting away from stores to the distribution centers.” www.nrei.com

Industrial absorption continues to outpace new constr­uction­, and while some..are starting to be able to compete with AMZN, there are others that are just getting started on their e-commerce strategies #cre

The Free-Time Paradox in America“The increasingly automatic nature of many jobs, coupled with the shortening work week, seem to be creating parallel tensions, which lead an increasing number of workers to look not to work but to leisure for satisfaction, meaning, expression … Today’s leisure occupations are no longer regarded merely as time fillers; the must, in the opinion of both social worker and psychiatrist, also perform to some extent as emotional buffers.” www.theatlantic.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

September 12th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Why Leaders Need To Be Great Storytellers“What’s your favorite movie? I’ll bet you can enthusiastically tell me all about it, even if you haven’t seen it in years. Stories are like nutrition for our souls. We remember them and love them. They have deeper meaning for us. On YouTube, there’s a wonderful video clip of a group of marines belting out the lyrics to the theme song from Disney’s “Frozen”. Who would have thought combat soldiers could relate to a Disney princess?” www.forbes.com

The Secret Ingredient for Exceptional Mental Toughness“It’s a myth that we’re at the mercy of an unending onslaught of information. Actually, we make choices about where we direct our attention every day, says neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, PhD, a psychology professor at McGill University. Sometimes, we just need to be more selective about where our attention goes.” www.fastcompany.com

It’s a myth that we’re at the mercy of an unending onslaught of inform­ation.

Inside McDonald’s Bold Decision to Go Cage Free“(McDonalds CEO) Easterbrook had good reasons to delay—but he had even more reasons to plow ahead. McDonald’s risked losing its customers in the long run. The era of mass-produced and processed food that it helped create and came to embody was falling out of favor fast, especially with coveted millennial consumers. “There used to be a day when industrial food was viewed as safe and therefore better,” says RBC Capital Markets analyst David Palmer. “The pendulum has swung pretty hard over to the other direction.” www.fortune.com

We’re the Only Plane in the Sky“Nearly every American above a certain age remembers precisely where they were on September 11, 2001. But for a tiny handful of people, those memories touch American presidential history. Shortly after the attacks began, the most powerful man in the world, who had been informed of the World Trade Center explosions in a Florida classroom, was escorted to a runway and sent to the safest place his handlers could think of: the open sky.” www.politico.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

September 6th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Capital Remains Cheap Despite Looming Fed Hike“Even if the Fed raises rates another 25 to 50 basis points, the investment sales market is not likely to have a significant reaction as rates are still incredibly low compared to historical levels. In addition, there are a number of factors that will keep downward pressure on cap rates even as interest rates rise, including compelling risk-adjusted returns for real estate and the strong demand from foreign investors for U.S. real estate” www.nreionline.com

How To Rescue Your Attention Span From Information Overload“It’s a myth that we’re at the mercy of an unending onslaught of information. Actually, we make choices about where we direct our attention every day, says neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, PhD, a psychology professor at McGill University. Sometimes, we just need to be more selective about where our attention goes.” www.fastcompany.com

It’s a myth that we’re at the mercy of an unending onslaught of inform­ation.

How the ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ Myth Is Hurting Your Business“The problem, as I’ve learned over time, is that the notion of low-hanging fruit is flawed. We assume that picking it will be easy only because we’ve never tried to do it before. You think you know, but actually you don’t. In my mind, declaring that an unfamiliar task will yield low-hanging fruit is almost always an admission that you have little insight about what you’re setting out to do. And any estimate of how much work it’ll take to do something you’ve never tried before is likely to be off by degrees of magnitude.” www.inc.com

What Kids Wish Their Teachers Knew
“When Kyle Schwartz started teaching third grade at Doull Elementary School in Denver, she wanted to get to know her students better. She asked them to finish the sentence “I wish my teacher knew.” The responses were eye-opening for Ms. Schwartz. Some children were struggling with poverty (“I wish my teacher knew I don’t have pencils at home to do my homework”); an absent parent (“I wish my teacher knew that sometimes my reading log is not signed because my mom isn’t around a lot”); and a parent taken away (“I wish my teacher knew how much I miss my dad because he got deported to Mexico when I was 3 years old and I haven’t seen him in six years”).” www.nytimes.com

Will Pedestrians Be Able to Tell What a Driverless Car Is About to Do?“Engineers and designers will also have to take into account some of the new challenges that accompany driverlessness. For instance: How will self-driving vehicles communicate with human drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists? The use of blinkers, brake lights, and hazard lights can be automated, surely, but there are many human gestures and cues that are a crucial part of how people navigate the roads—eye contact, the waving of a hand at an intersection—which a machine can’t precisely emulate.” www.theatlantic.com

“We learn from birth how to communicate with other people, but commun­icatin­g with machines is a very different skill.”

August 29th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Why 30 Percent of Millennials Want to Ditch Their Employer Within a Year“There is one thing (the)..survey doesn’t reveal–what it takes to keep Millennials from leaving. There is an answer–and it lies in how Millennials were raised. This is the first generation to be coached their entire lives. Raised on organized activities, they don’t see coaching as a sign of weakness but rather as a path to greatness.” www.inc.com

Millen­nials: “This is the first generation to be coached their entire lives”

Your Business Trip Might Be Destroying Your HealthTraveling can be one big ‘sit’: – get your move on! “Most of the time, traveling requires little to no activity. Sitting in a car, train or airplane are pretty sedentary activities. When you’re traveling for business, you’ve also probably got quite a few meetings on the agenda—another sedentary activity.” www.forbes.com

How to Make Your One-on-Ones with Employees More Productive
“One-on-one meetings with direct reports often feel more hurried and disorganized than they need to be. It’s important to check in regularly with each of your employees, but how can you make the best use of the time? How can you make the meetings more productive and collaborative? What do you need to change as the manager and what do you need to ask your direct report to do differently as well?” www.forbes.com

3 Powerful Ways To Stay Positive“The real obstacle to positivity is that our brains are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats. This survival mechanism served humankind well back when we were hunters and gatherers, living each day with the very real threat of being killed by someone or something in our immediate surroundings.” www.forbes.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

August 22nd, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

What to Do When You and Your Boss Aren’t Getting Along“Even the best office relationships hit a rut, but if it’s your relationship with your boss that’s suffering, work can be especially challenging. Maybe you’ve lost their trust, or you haven’t been seeing eye to eye lately, or maybe you’ve never really gotten along. Whatever the reason, how can you build a connection that’s more than “just OK”? What steps can you take to improve your interactions? And are there times when you have to accept that the relationship may never get better?” www.hbr.org

how can you build a connection that’s more than “just OK” with your boss?

Shave a few seconds here and there on regular tasks, and pretty soon it all adds up to real time. The great thing about our devices is that if we set them up correctly, we can save all that time automatically.” www.michaelhyatt.com

How to Make Your One-on-Ones with Employees More Productive
“One-on-one meetings with direct reports often feel more hurried and disorganized than they need to be. It’s important to check in regularly with each of your employees, but how can you make the best use of the time? How can you make the meetings more productive and collaborative? What do you need to change as the manager and what do you need to ask your direct report to do differently as well?” www.hbr.com

When Parks Were Radical“A century and a half ago, city dwellers in search of fresh air and rural pastures visited graveyards. It was a bad arrangement. The processions of tombstones interfered with athletic activity, the gloom with carefree frolicking. Nor did mourners relish having to contend with the crowds of pleasure-seekers.” www.theatlantic.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

August 15th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

The Surging Popularity of Co-Working“The workplace is shifting from cubicle farms and cloistered offices to open-plan layouts that nudge employees into greater collaboration and communication. Meanwhile, millions of Americans have been freed from the shackles of clocking in to a 9-to-5 job, free to make their hours and choose where to spend them.” www.bizjournals.com

#working from home is not all it’s cracked up to be…the dog barks and the laundry is calling your name #cre

To understand Amazon, then, is necessarily to engage in a kind of Kremlinology. That’s especially true of the story behind one of its most important business areas: the logistics by which it ships orders to its customers.” www.nytimes.com

How to Make Your One-on-Ones with Employees More Productive
“One-on-one meetings with direct reports often feel more hurried and disorganized than they need to be. It’s important to check in regularly with each of your employees, but how can you make the best use of the time? How can you make the meetings more productive and collaborative? What do you need to change as the manager and what do you need to ask your direct report to do differently as well?” www.hbr.com

August 8th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Emails Out Of Control? Here Are 5 Ways To Tame Your Inbox“Ignore it all you want, but that intimidating number above your mail icon isn’t going anywhere until you take action.To aid in the daunting quest of taming your out-of-control inbox, we’ve put together a few simple tips that will not only get the number of unreads down to a manageable level, but keep it neat and easy to navigate for years to come, too.” www.forbes.com

The Top 6 US Cities for Office Occupancy Cost
“Peaking office rents are becoming a problem in many markets. Tenants have shown they’re willing to expand, but as high demand pushes rents to record levels amid Brexit and the upcoming election turmoil, tenants might have an excuse to delay decisions until 2017. Across the globe, trophy office rents increased 2.4 percent from mid-year 2015 to mid-year 2016.” www.nrei.com

July 25th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

The Family Dynamics We Grew Up with Shape How We Work“My work with top executives has shown that deep-seated, sometimes irrational fears can skew their decisions and their ability to execute company strategy. But I’ve found another influence, equally deep-seated, that affects how they deal with others in the C-suite: their earliest interactions with family members and friends.” www.hbr.com

A deep-seated influence that affects how they deal with others in the C-suite: their earliest intera­ctions with family members and friends.

How U.S. Army Basic Training Turns Diverse Groups into TeamsWe know that diverse teams are more creative and productive than homogenous teams, but how do you get individuals who aren’t alike working together smoothly? As I’ve seen from teaching over 960 recruits as a basic-training company commander in the U.S. Army, people from various backgrounds struggle to discover shared interests during the early stages of team building. Inclusion is one thing, and integration is something else entirely. I’ve found that people with disparate life experiences often require help from their leaders to see and develop common ground. www.hbr.com

I Would Never Have Taken The Job If I’d Known This“The next time you consider taking a job with a startup, you’ll not only read the Executive Bios on the company’s website and search LinkedIn LNKD +0.20% and Google GOOGL +0.66% for more information on the executive team members, you’ll also ask your hiring manager, “Can you please walk me through the executive team roster, and help me understand each person’s role?” www.forbes.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

July 18th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

The Data-Driven Case for Vacation“The question that needs to be asked is whether we are more productive and successful with fewer days, or whether work is getting in the way of our success. Statistically, taking more vacation results in greater success at work as well as lower stress and more happiness at work and home.” www.hbr.com

Statis­ticall­y, taking more vacation results in greater success at work as well as lower stress and more happiness at work and home

7 Digital Tools to Help You Get More Done Every DayThink about the last time you completed a huge project, organized your space, or completed a bunch of necessary tasks. When it comes to work, whittling down a to-do list may be one of the most gratifying things a person can do. To help, here are several tools to skyrocket any office worker’s productivity. www.inc.com

Amazon Is Quietly Eliminating List Prices“…in many cases, Amazon has dropped any mention of a list price. There is just one price. Take it or leave it.The new approach comes as discounts both online and offline have become the subject of dozens of consumer lawsuits for being much less than they seem. It is also occurring while Amazon is in the middle of an ambitious multiyear shift from a store selling one product at a time to a full-fledged ecosystem. Amazon wants to be so deeply embedded in a customer’s life that buying happens as naturally as breathing, and nearly as often.” www.nytimes.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

July 11th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

US Office Sector: Tenant Demand Showing Signs Of Cooling“U.S. businesses have had many curveballs thrown at them this year – concerns over the health of China’s economy, equity market volatility, weak U.S. GDP growth, now Brexit – many reasons to at least tap the breaks on expansion plans,” Kevin Thorpe, Cushman & Wakefield’s Chief Economist said. “Moreover, at this maturing stage in the cycle, it is not uncommon to see job growth and absorption levels decelerate as the economy nears full employment. But overall, the office leasing fundamentals are holding up extremely well, and the secondary markets are really starting to hit their stride.” www.cushwake.com

The Future of CRE: An Executive Summary“We as a profession could get a lot better at scenario planning,” pointing to the need to plan for multiple possible scenarios and update those plans regularly. CRE executives can also add value by being broadly “cycle aware” – paying attention to economic, business and real estate cycles. The C-Suite places a premium on flexibility and agility precisely because business conditions change rapidly, and there is much that CRE can do to support
this imperative.” www.corenetglobal.org

How Are Drones Influencing The Commercial Real Estate Industry?“In both urban and suburban settings, these machines are offering occupiers a perspective on real estate listings different from what they’ve ever had before by presenting panoramic photos and videos of properties within the true context of their locations and surroundings. In cities, drone technology enables space users to experience views on certain floors, sometimes from offices in buildings that have not yet been built.” www.cushwake.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/07/11/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-75/feed/0The Billion Dollar Tweethttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/06/12/the-billion-dollar-tweet/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/06/12/the-billion-dollar-tweet/#commentsSun, 12 Jun 2016 22:15:30 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4859I imagine that Elon Musk was a little peeved. There had been much erroneous media coverage about his battery program. The rumor was that Samsung SDI was going to be stepping into the Tesla battery mix. He’s a busy man..he didn’t call PR or talk to his team about what to do.

Instead, I bet Elon harrumphed as he ripped out his iPhone to correct the misinformation. Yup, he was going to set things straight. Here is what he said to his 4.14 million followers in 117 characters:

The Tweet Hear Round Wall Street

Then the fun began. Over 1,500 people retweeted the post and nearly 6,000 “liked” it. That meant the Tweet had gone galactic and likely was seen by tens of millions of people. Other channels such as Facebook and LinkedIn picked it up as well; oh, and ALL media organizations that follow Mr. Musk.

What happened next stunned analysts as well as both Panasonic and the rumored replacement shop, Samsung SDI.

That same trading day, the Tweet relieved Samsung SDI of $580 million (8%) in market capitalization. Meanwhile, Panasonic added $800 million in market value.

That, boys and girls, means that Musk’s Tweet changed tow company’s fortunes by a total of almost $1.4 billion dollars.

Twitter Is Dying

Forbes reported in January of this year that “Twitter Will Be Dead in Three Years.” Much has been made of the leadership changes at the social media giant and its seeming relevance issues. Millions of older Americans are trying to figure out hashtags and how to use the service in 140 characters or less.

I’m on Twitter every day, and in my view it is essentially a utility. I think it’s highly likely that for years to come, the world will communicate large events through this micro-blogging outlet.

Maybe Twitter will fall on hard times in years to come, but these are the glory days. A savvy executive of a technology company can communicate directly and unfiltered with millions of people with a billion (with a “b”) dollar impact.

Content and Social Marketing Is Very Much Alive

Elon set the world straight in one Tweet. What can you and your organization do to positively impact the world around you? An author I respect named Michael Hyatt has written a great book on this very subject called Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World.

I know you’re busy. We all are. But whether you are an executive (CEO Musk Tweets), on a staff or working on your own gig, I submit content marketing has a place in your world.

Your passion and expertise will resonate. You simply have to let the world know about them!

Maybe #hashtags deserve a little respect after all – certainly for @elonmusk!

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/06/12/the-billion-dollar-tweet/feed/0Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles to Help You This Weekhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/23/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-74/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/23/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-74/#commentsMon, 23 May 2016 10:33:01 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4851

May 23rd, 2016

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Each week, I select and hand curated few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. These are not made by a bot, I create every post personally! I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Ten Interview Questions Only Weak Managers Ask“We can forgive a hiring manager for being asleep while interviewing techniques have evolved over the past three decades. What’s not so easy to forgive or overlook is a hiring manager’s arch, mean or snippy tone and attitude during a job interview, as manifested in his or her speech, body language, and of course the questions the manager chooses to ask you.” www.forbes.com

Stephen Schwarzman And Blackstone: Wall Street’s Unstoppable Force“In the past eight years Blackstone’s footprint and influence under Schwarzman have become nothing short of breathtaking. Since the financial crisis Blackstone’s assets have nearly quadrupled. More than 85% of its 2,070 employees have joined since 2007, and the firm has introduced dozens of new products. Blackstone has major stakes in 92 companies, from Hilton Hotels and Michaels Stores to iconic brands like Versace and Leica Camera; it owns thousands of pieces of commercial real estate, including Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town and Chicago’s Willis Tower, and more single-family homes in the U.S. than any other private entity. In nearly every business in which it operates, including hedge funds and credit, Blackstone is the leader.” www.forbes.com

Now for Sale in Chicago: Prime Catholic Church Real EstateEven God is selling in this market: “The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has tapped an adviser to sell the sprawling lot across the street from its 140-year-old Holy Name Cathedral, in the latest sign of a religious institution selling prime real estate in response to hot property markets.” www.wsj.com

Even God is selling in this ­market http:/­/on.ws­j.com/­25ahIkQ #CRE @WSJ

“It is easy to find yourself hanging around with the wrong people. There are a lot of reasons for us to fall into that trap. Here are a few of them…” www.forbes.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

Ken

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/23/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-74/feed/0Baby You Can Drive My Car: Driverless Cars and #CREhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/16/baby-you-can-drive-my-car-driverless-cars-and-cre/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/16/baby-you-can-drive-my-car-driverless-cars-and-cre/#commentsMon, 16 May 2016 17:24:09 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4807Your driverless ride will be here before you know it.

The WSJreports automaker GM will start testing self driving cars in less than 12 months with ride sharing service Lyft.

University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is building MCity, its 32-acre environment for testing self-driving cars and is designed re create challenging conditions they could face on roads.

Business Insiderreports on a BI Intelligence analysis that predicts there will be 10 million self-driving cars on the road by 2020

Oh, also you can now sign up to take a driverless car for a spin around London, according to a recent C|NET article. Mr. McCartney, kindly que up “Drive My Car.”

Beep beep, beep beep – yeah! (iStock)

Soon, our old fashioned laws in the United States will finally catch up with technology and permit these George Jetson vehicles from the future on public roads. When Uncle Sam gives the thumbs up, we will see a massive difference in how people commute.

Change is already starting to occur in major US cities via UberPool. Check out Uber CEO and Co-founder Travis Kalanick’s TED talk on his company’s success in reducing traffic through that very tool. I’ve personally used UberPool on a number of occasions in multiple cities and found it not only a quite pleasant way to get around but also to meet new folks.

When (not if) self driving cars become the norm, the need for personal vehicles will drop dramatically. There will be profound changes for freight delivery, transportation networks, auto manufactures, dealers, and consumers alike. Entire industries and employee labor sheds will be reshaped.

The idea is that someone could sign up for Apple Car just like you would iTunes. You would subscribe to transportation and simply summon a ride whenever necessary. You ditch your car and sign on to a service – no fuss no muss.

And guess what, if self driving car services eliminate office workers need to drive to work and park, this will also change the way we interact with and even value commercial real estate (CRE).

If we fast forward to the early 2020′s, I think CRE will feel the impact in at least three ways.

Self-d­riving cars will change the way we interact with and even value #CRE

So, what if you are the owner of one of those big urban beauties? You are large and in charge of a 50 story tower built on top of a parking podium. You have a love hate relationship with parking. While it’s difficult to administer, landlords with buildings in urban markets make huge coin from monthly parking payments. According to Statistica, revenue from parking operations in the US will exceed $10 billion in 2016.

In your case, (and keeping it simple) let’s assume you have 1 million feet of space leased at $45 a foot, net of expenses. If you are fully leased in our example, you would have $45 million a year in income. On the parking front you have 2,000 spaces at $180 a month on average. So you collect a little over $4.3 million a year in parking revenue.

If parking were completely removed, you’d lose 10% of your income.

What does the income loss do to value? Applying a 6% capitalization rate to $49.3 million means your asset is worth $820 million. Apply the same rate to 10% less income means the tower of power is now worth only $750 million.

Our math shows your owners just lost $70 million in value because of self-driving cars. Ugh, that hurt.

On the upside for ownership, future developments could dramatically reduce their garage sizes. Depending on what kind of garage one builds, space can range from $19,000 to over $30,000 per parking stall. That’s a lot of capital that can be redeployed in other areas.

Approach Into and Out of Buildings

Now put yourself in the shoes of an employee headed to work. They are happily Tweeting and Facebooking on the way in and are all caught up on the news.

Think about how you enter the typical American office building. You pull into the garage and walk into the lobby after you park your car. What would happen if everyone were getting dropped off in the morning and picked up in the evening instead? We’d have different crowd management issues.

We’d need to rethink the whole arrival and departure experience for CRE. Would landlords build the equivalent of taxi holding pens for the vehicles of the future and could they charge for them? Would lobbies, which many times are ceremonial, need to be larger to accommodate groups of people awaiting their chariots?

Perhaps we could finally activate these public spaces similar to a nice airline club area with seats and power to charge our many devices. Airlines make money on their clubs. I’d bet landlords aren’t far behind.

Reuse of Parking Garages

We’ll likely always need some parking in office buildings, but what if the ratio went from today’s 3-4 spaces per 1,000 square feet of office space to .01 spaces per thousand?

In suburban locations, surface parking would simply be replaced with vertical structures that could house more workers.

However, in urban environments, we would have a huge amount of extra space in existing garages. Cross-fit gyms only need so much square footage. Could some kind of retail mall squeeze into the empty decks of the future or would landlords now try to sell storage? Is this a new opportunity for the co-working crowd?

Creative garage conversion is about to be a thing, I predict.

iLandlord

The bottom line is that many of today’s office buildings could find themselves functionally obsolete in the worst case or having a reduction in value in even the best case. We’ve been here before many times, however. Remember the curvy buildings of the 1980′s?

Landlords and their architects will have a real opportunity to reinvent their product into new and interesting structures without the burden of all those vehicles. One thing they may now be able to provide to the tenant community are the densities that many companies yearn for. In the old days, we used to try and get 4 people for every 1,000 feet in space. Now some companies are well more than double that number.

Tenant sided real estate executives will have one fewer issue to argue about – the parking provision.

And Paul McCartney called it all when the Beatles released their ditty in 1965. I knew I liked that guy.

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/16/baby-you-can-drive-my-car-driverless-cars-and-cre/feed/0Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles to Help You This Weekhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/16/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-73/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/16/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-73/#commentsMon, 16 May 2016 10:09:48 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4825

May 16th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select and hand curated few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. These are not made by a bot, I create every post personally! I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Recognizing Employees Is the Simplest Way to Improve Morale“According to a survey recently commissioned for my new company OGO (O Great One!), 82% of employed Americans don’t feel that their supervisors recognize them enough for their contributions. That lack of recognition takes a terrible toll on morale, productivity, and, ultimately, profitability. Another key finding: 40% of employed Americans say they’d put more energy into their work if they were recognized more often.

The good news: It’s both simple and inexpensive for leaders to solve the recognition deficit in their organizations.” www.hbr.com

It’s both simple and inexpensive for #leaders to solve the recognition deficit #cre

This week, GM’s Chevrolet and Hyundai announced plans to add technologies that will deliver smartphone functionality to the dashboard of new cars. On Wednesday, Chevrolet said it would offer both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility in 14 models, including the 2016 Cruze compact car that will debut June 24. A day earlier, the 2015 Hyundai Sonata became the first car to include Google’s new in-car voice-enabled software Android Auto.” www.fortune.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

Ken

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/16/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-73/feed/0Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles to Help You This Weekhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/09/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-72/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/09/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-72/#commentsMon, 09 May 2016 10:41:25 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4794

May 8th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select and hand curated few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. These are not made by a bot, I create every post personally! I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How Gaming Is Shaping the Future of Work“While most bosses would frown on playing Halo at the office, it’s video games that are driving much of the innovation in video, virtual reality, and collaboration technologies today—something that has important implications for how we work, especially with far-flung colleagues.” www.hbr.com

Forget Inbox Zero: How One Man Conquered His Email And Improved His Life“We should start treating email more like regular mail…”. “You only get regular mail once a day. It comes in a big pile and there is no chance of getting more until tomorrow.”(Wilson) even designed a program,DamInbox, which keeps emails from appearing in your inbox until a preset time. The insidious thing about email, he said, is that it feels like we need to read it right away. But for most people, that simply isn’t true. www.forbes.com

The insidious thing about email, is that it fe­els l­ike we need to read it right away. But for most people, that simply isn’t true. #cre

The Innovative Coworking Spaces of 15th-Century Italy“What can those who want to create more innovative and collaborative workplaces today — whether that’s a better office in a traditional organization, a coworking space, a startup incubator, or a fab lab — learn from the workshops of the Renaissance? The bottegas’ three major selling points were turning ideas into action, fostering dialogue, and facilitating the convergence of art and science..” www.hbr.com

With ‘Gigs’ Instead of Jobs, Workers Bear New Burdens“…anyone who cares about the future of work in the United States shouldn’t focus too narrowly on the novelty of people making extra money using their mobile phones. There’s a bigger shift underway. That’s a key implication of new research that indicates the proportion of American workers who don’t have traditional jobs — who instead work as independent contractors, through temporary services or on-call — has soared in the last decade. They account for vastly more American workers than the likes of Uber alone.” www.NYTimes.com

Technology Firms Search for New Office Markets in Effort to Cut Costs“The average rent per sq. ft. for San Francisco office space in February 2016 was $99.42, marking a 102.4 percent year-over-year increase, according to online real estate database LoopNet. During the same period, the amount of available office space dropped by more than 21.0 percent. And 2015 brought record employment to California, mostly in tech sector office jobs. In the same year, San Francisco was cited as one of the most expensive cities in the U.S., according to the Council for Community and Economic Research. Tech giants are driving much of that momentum, as the biggest names in U.S. technology call the San Francisco Bay Area home.” www.nreionline.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

Ken

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/09/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-72/feed/0Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles to Help You This Weekhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/02/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-71/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/05/02/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-71/#commentsMon, 02 May 2016 13:28:04 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4776

May 2nd, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a hand curated few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. These are not made by a bot, I create very post personally! I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

3 Reasons Coworking Isn’t Going AnywhereLast month, WeWork hit a $16 billion valuation. That’s billion. With a “b”. The valuation reflected a 53% growth in appraisal, and the colossal coworking space is expected to raise even more money in the near future.

Although many people have mixed feelings about WeWork, the company is proving there is robust appetite for coworking spaces throughout the country. Even GE moved some of its company into a WeWork. While coworking isn’t quite right for all companies, the office alternative is proving to be a sustainable option for many growing companies. www.forbes.com

With ‘Gigs’ Instead of Jobs, Workers Bear New Burdens“…anyone who cares about the future of work in the United States shouldn’t focus too narrowly on the novelty of people making extra money using their mobile phones. There’s a bigger shift underway. That’s a key implication of new research that indicates the proportion of American workers who don’t have traditional jobs — who instead work as independent contractors, through temporary services or on-call — has soared in the last decade. They account for vastly more American workers than the likes of Uber alone.” www.NYTimes.com

Technology Firms Search for New Office Markets in Effort to Cut Costs“The average rent per sq. ft. for San Francisco office space in February 2016 was $99.42, marking a 102.4 percent year-over-year increase, according to online real estate database LoopNet. During the same period, the amount of available office space dropped by more than 21.0 percent. And 2015 brought record employment to California, mostly in tech sector office jobs. In the same year, San Francisco was cited as one of the most expensive cities in the U.S., according to the Council for Community and Economic Research. Tech giants are driving much of that momentum, as the biggest names in U.S. technology call the San Francisco Bay Area home.” www.nreionline.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

April 18th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

If Work Is Digital, Why Do We Still Go to the Office?“What early digital commentators missed is that even if we can work from anywhere, that does not mean we want to. We strive for places that allow us to share knowledge, to generate ideas, and to pool talents and perspectives. Human aggregation, friction, and the interaction of our minds are vital aspects of work, especially in the creative industries. And that is why the quality of the physical workplace is becoming more crucial than ever — bringing along watershed changes.” www.hbr.org

The quality of the physical #workplace is becoming more crucial than ever-#cre

Four Lessons From A Millennial’s Dream Boss“Academics, entrepreneurs, and management thought leaders have been trying to decode what it takes to effectively lead Millennials since they arrived into the workplace a decade ago. Carey Smith, CEO of Big Ass Solutions (formerly Big Ass Fans, and named so because customers would see their immensity and say, “Woah, those are some big ass fans”) clearly has a beat on leading this generation. The company’s name is emblematic of both Carey’s sense of humor and what he does, and doesn’t, take seriously. Without investors, the organization remains obsessed with delighting customers and growing employees. Customers come first—no matter the cost. ” www.forbes.com

Congratulations! You’ve Been Fired“Treating workers as if they are widgets to be used up and discarded is a central part of the revised relationship between employers and employees that techies proclaim is an innovation as important as chips and software. The model originated in Silicon Valley, but it’s spreading. Old-guard companies are hiring “growth hackers” and building “incubators,” too. They see Silicon Valley as a model of enlightenment and forward thinking, even though this “new” way of working is actually the oldest game in the world: the exploitation of labor by capital.” www.NYTimes.com

Ten Of The Best Businesses To Come Out Of Shark Tank“ABC doesn’t rank the top success stories to come out of its hit reality show “Shark Tank,” where aspiring entrepreneurs make funding pitches to the “sharks” pictured here. We reached out to the six main sharks, combed through clips and interviewed more than 25 contestants, who track fellow Tank alumni, to come up with this list of 10 of the best businesses to graduate from the show.” www.forbes.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/04/18/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-70/feed/0I Hear Omaha is Nice This Time of Yearhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/04/11/i-hear-omaha-is-nice-this-time-of-year/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/04/11/i-hear-omaha-is-nice-this-time-of-year/#commentsMon, 11 Apr 2016 20:31:46 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4753Something is changing in corporate real estate, and quickly. CFOs are putting their foot down on cost.

Up until recently, corporate revenues were up, so higher real estate cost didn’t impact EBITDA so severely. We want to be cool, very urban and seen with all the right people in all the right places and that involves spending gobs of cash to be in trendy areas.

But with the little stock market scare a few months back and massive increases in real estate costs, corporate chieftains are ordering a rethink of location strategies.

SpaceX in CRE?

Elon Musk may have stuck the landing recently, but his rocket ships also represent a lot about CRE prices these days. We have lift off.

National Real Estate Investor (NREI) published an article Friday about the dire situation in real estate cost of late:

Your Rent Cost-Rocket Fuel….(iStock)

“The average rent per sq. ft. for San Francisco office space in February 2016 was $99.42, marking a 102.4 percent year-over-year increase, (emphasis added) according to online real estate database LoopNet. During the same period, the amount of available office space dropped by more than 21.0 percent. And 2015 brought record employment to California, mostly in tech sector office jobs. In the same year, San Francisco was cited as one of the most expensive cities in the U.S., according to the Council for Community and Economic Research. Tech giants are driving much of that momentum, as the biggest names in U.S. technology call the San Francisco Bay Area home.”

And there is massive competition from large, well established players. To wit, “in the Northern Peninsula and the Valley, in the last quarter or so Apple has expanded by another 1 million square feet. Google has leased over 500,000 square feet, and they have entered into additional building purchase agreements. Palo Alto Networks has expanded by 300,000 square feet. Facebook has taken on 200,000 square feet,” executives with office REIT Boston Properties noted in the company’s fourth quarter 2015 earnings report.

In the corporate real estate world, CFOs want the cool, hip spaces, but the business case is getting harder and harder for their unit leaders to prove. We’ve heard the story on critical labor shortages, the absolute crucial requirement for cool coffee shops, and walk to work scenarios, but at what cost?

Now there is evidence companies are making the hard choices to look at different markets to cut costs. Morgan Stanley will move operations out of Manhattan to a number of other locations including Mumbai, India reports NREI in its recent real estate cost article:

“…technology firms are moving to the Midwest and the Southwest to enjoy lower office rents and more affordable housing for their workers. Those that wish to stay on the West Coast are moving north to Portland, Ore. or south to Los Angeles. These movements are even spurring spin-off market names such as “Silicon Prairie,” “Silicon Desert,” “Silicon Mountains,” “Silicon Forest” and “Silicon Beach.””

Even the most urban generation since World War II – the Millennials – are crying uncle and moving to more affordable locales. Bloomberg reports that Millennials are fleeing high cost Vancouver in droves for lower cost locales. Turns out that Millennials or not, they can run a Quicken budget. Plus, green grass and swing sets have a way of working their way up the list when diapers hit the scene.

And no less than the New York Timessays that “From Des Moines to Omaha to Kansas City — a region known more for its barns than its bandwidth — a start-up tech scene is burgeoning. Dozens of new ventures are laying roots each year, investors are committing hundreds of millions of dollars to them, and state governments are teaming up with private organizations to promote the growing tech community. They are calling it — what else? — the Silicon Prairie.”

Silicon X

So perhaps it’s time for your company to rethink location. If you are located in a cool, but very expensive brand name city, at least look around a little.

Have you ever been to Omaha? I have, and it’s really a pleasant place. The riverfront is charming and the tech economy is “thriving”, according to an article in the Silicon Prairie News.

Same goes for Oklahoma City, Des Moines, and many Great Plains towns. Also, check out Rust Belt cities like Cleveland, and even (gasp) Detroit. National Geographic says “tough, cheap and real, Detroit is cool again.” You might just be surprised. Being creative in a crazy real estate market can lead to some very interesting discoveries.

I’ve personally sat in location strategy meetings where we discuss cities that wouldn’t traditionally be on the A list. Many turn up their noses and suggest there is NO WAY we are moving to city X, which appears to lack the cool factor.

But given the ridiculous price increases and the huge battles for space in A list cities, Kansas City might look nicer than you think. It could be nice to be a big fish in a small(er) pond for once.

Maybe this is your brand of “space” exploration in new locations. See, you and Elon have something in common after all.

April 11th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Still Trying to Get More Done“Psssst. Yes, you. I know you’re busy, but stop what you’re doing and read this instead. I’ve got some tips that are going to change your life. Not chiseled abs or better sex—we’ll leave those to Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan. This is about setting yourself on a path toward that professional-class nirvana getting more done. You deserve a break, and there’s no more virtuous form of procrastination than reading about new ways to accomplish work faster—a body of clickbait that’s become known as “productivity porn.” www.hbr.org

With ‘Gigs’ Instead of Jobs, Workers Bear New Burdens“…anyone who cares about the future of work in the United States shouldn’t focus too narrowly on the novelty of people making extra money using their mobile phones. There’s a bigger shift underway. That’s a key implication of new research that indicates the proportion of American workers who don’t have traditional jobs — who instead work as independent contractors, through temporary services or on-call — has soared in the last decade. They account for vastly more American workers than the likes of Uber alone.” www.NYTimes.com

Technology Firms Search for New Office Markets in Effort to Cut Costs“The average rent per sq. ft. for San Francisco office space in February 2016 was $99.42, marking a 102.4 percent year-over-year increase, according to online real estate database LoopNet. During the same period, the amount of available office space dropped by more than 21.0 percent. And 2015 brought record employment to California, mostly in tech sector office jobs. In the same year, San Francisco was cited as one of the most expensive cities in the U.S., according to the Council for Community and Economic Research. Tech giants are driving much of that momentum, as the biggest names in U.S. technology call the San Francisco Bay Area home.” www.nreionline.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

April 4th, 2016

Credit: iStock

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

6 TED Talks You Should Watch To Up Your Mindset“Engaging your mind is the best way to keep it sharp, but in the hustle and bustle of daily life, it’s easy to fall into a slump. If you need a mental pick-me-up, check out these fascinating TED Talks. Get inspired. Get engaged. Give your brain a boost.?” www.forbes.com

The 18 Coolest Offices of the 100 Best Companies“It’s not just the stellar perks, rich benefits programs, and a strong commitment to great workplace culture that keep employees happy at Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. Some also have amazing offices that inspire them to give their best every day. Here’s a look at a few fun and unusual office spaces.” www.fortune.com

A Refresher on Internal Rate of Return“You’ve got a great idea for a new product that will increase revenue or a new system that will cut the company’s costs. But how can you be sure that it’s a worthwhile investment? Any time you propose a capital expenditure, you can be sure senior leaders will want to know what the return on investment (ROI) is. There are a variety of methods you can use to calculate ROI — net present value, payback, breakeven — and internal rate of return, or IRR.” www.hbr.com

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

March 28th, 2016

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Ten Rules of Etiquette for Videoconferencing“It’s the big day. You have a videoconference with the chief executive of your company to pitch your ideas. You’re on time, and you couldn’t be more prepared for your presentation.

But are you up-to-date with your online—and on-camera—etiquette?” www.wsj.com

Workplace design trends are changing, so thinking ahead is crucial for any entrepreneur moving to a new location or giving their existing office a redesign, according to Dezeen. Michael O’Neill, head of research at office furniture company Haworth, told the architecture and design magazine that changing employee demographics and social norms are making the planning process for office design much less straightforward than 15 years ago.” www.inc.com

Strong Fundamentals Underpin US CRE“Even as global economic uncertainty persists, US businesses kept the faith by hiring at a strong pace in February, Cushman & Wakefield says in its latest Employment Tracker. The month’s better-than-expected employment report marked a rebound from a disappointing January and continued a run of improving economic data.

A Refresher on Internal Rate of Return“You’ve got a great idea for a new product that will increase revenue or a new system that will cut the company’s costs. But how can you be sure that it’s a worthwhile investment? Any time you propose a capital expenditure, you can be sure senior leaders will want to know what the return on investment (ROI) is. There are a variety of methods you can use to calculate ROI — net present value, payback, breakeven — and internal rate of return, or IRR.” www.hbr.com

March 14th, 2016

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

“..after carefully examining my own email practices, I’ve realized that some of my own difficulty in keeping up with my correspondence lies in the mistaken assumptions that undergird much productivity advice. We’ve been warned repeatedly that it’s a bad idea to start your day by checking email. Legions of business publications have inveighed against the practice, and Oprah favorite Julie Morgenstern penned a popular productivity book called Never Check Email in the Morning.

Would changing our ways be a panacea for the 80% of us smartphone users ages 18–44 who, a 2013 study revealed, check our phones upon waking, even before brushing our teeth? Maybe. It would certainly better equip us to focus on other professional priorities before spinning off onto a series of unexpected tasks.

But when I analyzed the messages that languished at the bottom of my inbox, I realized the volume of correspondence wasn’t the issue. In fact, managing the profusion of less-important messages can be easily handled by subscribing to a service like Unroll.me, which clusters them together to be read at your leisure.

Instead, my problem with email was often the difficult decisions it necessitated.” www.hbr.com

7 Must-Read Books That Will Change Your Life“Sometimes, finding new ways to look at the same problems is all you need to take your business to the next level. But that means finding ideas and perspectives that don’t result in incremental changes but in major changes.

I can name plenty of great books, but books that truly changed how I think and act? That’s a pretty short list.” www.inc.com

Strong Fundamentals Underpin US CRE“Even as global economic uncertainty persists, US businesses kept the faith by hiring at a strong pace in February, Cushman & Wakefield says in its latest Employment Tracker. The month’s better-than-expected employment report marked a rebound from a disappointing January and continued a run of improving economic data.

We all have too much to do and too little time to do it. As a boss, you may have already learned how to plan, prioritize, and streamline your work. But how can you help your team members do the same? Should you dictate the processes and tools they use? How do you keep people from taking on too much and burning out or continuously spinning their wheels?. www.hbr.com

How to Break Bad News to Your Boss“Sometimes at work – and actually, more times than you’d ever want – something goes wrong or gets screwed up. A project goes awry; an important client decides to go elsewhere; a new product just doesn’t catch fire the way everyone expected. Business is filled with crises and failures, large and small, and when they happen to be yours, despite the natural instinct to keep the problem quiet, you have to tell your boss.

That’s never fun, but it’s life. And life will go on for you, career-wise, as long as you remember one key thing…” www.linkedin.com

March 7th, 2016

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Why Today’s Corporate Research Centers Need to Be in CitiesSomething is happening in Midtown Atlanta. Georgia Tech’s city-centered campus has become one of the nation’s leading destinations for corporate research centers. Over the last decade, Tech Square, the eight-square-block area in Midtown designed to facilitate private and public research ventures, has attracted the corporate research centers of 12 Fortune 500 companies, including AT&T, Panasonic, and Coca-Cola, as well as hundreds of small technology startups. And just recently, NCR, one of the largest U.S. electronics companies, moved its global headquarters from the suburbs to Tech Square, bringing along 3,600 employees.

Midtown Atlanta is an example of the growing trend of companies relocating major research facilities to be near urban universities that provide mixed-use amenities, lively places, and a high density of firms. www.hbr.com

A Battle Plan for Jet Lag?
“…some of the latest (and perhaps most effective) jet-lag solutions are being developed for people who fly to places most of us never will. The fatigue management team at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston helps astronauts — who, for training purposes, must fly frequently among international space agencies in Russia, Japan and Germany — overcome jet lag two to three times faster than other travelers. And while the anti-jet-lag plans that the team prescribes are highly individualized, the general principles can be simplified for the bleary-eyed rest of us.” www.nytimes.com

How Google Optimized Healthy Office Snacks“One of the major contributions of behavioral economics to our understanding of behavior change lies in the application of small nudges in “choice architecture,” that is, the presentation of available options. Small changes in the choice context can direct attention toward healthier options or make those options easier to choose.” www.hbr.com

How to Boost Your Team’s ProductivityWe all have too much to do and too little time to do it. As a boss, you may have already learned how to plan, prioritize, and streamline your work. But how can you help your team members do the same? Should you dictate the processes and tools they use? How do you keep people from taking on too much and burning out or continuously spinning their wheels?. www.hbr.com

Meaningful Work Beats Over-the-Top Perks Every Time“At times I see examples of this perk warfare going a bit too far. I understand the scientific evidence that afternoon naps can boost productivity, and I understand the appeal of companies installing nap rooms. Instead of a private nap room, however, I recently visited a startup that installed hammocks just off the lobby, so employees could swing while they snooze.”

Really? The first thing a visitor sees when entering the door is your employees sleeping at work? Is that the message you want to send? www.hbr.com

At times I see examples of this perk warfare going a bit too far. #cre

February 29th, 2016

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Why I’ve Still Got Tape Over My WebcamA large part of my job consists of interviewing people over Skype. More than a few times, after calling someone or answering a call myself, I see the interview subject’s face appear, while the little box in the corner that’s supposed to show my face remains black.

That’s because I, like many people who write about national security and civil liberties, have a big piece of tape over my built-in webcam. At this point, the tape has taken on the quality of a sticker on an electric guitar or a steamer trunk. In my mind, it’s as much a signifier of a certain ideology as much as a practical safeguard, though in truth it is both. www.inverse.com

The Résumé and References Check Out. How About Social Media?The human resources department at my company (a nonprofit with about 100 employees) is extremely concerned with avoiding hiring factors that might get us into trouble legally. So obviously they don’t ask candidates about age, marital status and so forth. But they also do not look at a potential employee’s social media.

After an offer was made to a candidate for a management position, I was alerted to comments she made on social media that are offensive not only to me, but probably to many of our potential clients. Is there really a good reason to avoid checking social media during the hiring process? www.nytimes.com

Branding in the Age of Social Media“To solve (the) puzzle, we need to remember that brands succeed when they break through in culture. And branding is a set of techniques designed to generate cultural relevance. Digital technologies have not only created potent new social networks but also dramatically altered how culture works. Digital crowds now serve as very effective and prolific innovators of culture—a phenomenon I call crowdculture. Crowdculture changes the rules of branding—which techniques work and which do not. If we understand crowdculture, then, we can figure out why branded-content strategies have fallen flat—and what alternative branding methods are empowered by social media.” www.hbr.com

How to Boost Your Team’s ProductivityWe all have too much to do and too little time to do it. As a boss, you may have already learned how to plan, prioritize, and streamline your work. But how can you help your team members do the same? Should you dictate the processes and tools they use? How do you keep people from taking on too much and burning out or continuously spinning their wheels?. www.hbr.com

Meaningful Work Beats Over-the-Top Perks Every Time“At times I see examples of this perk warfare going a bit too far. I understand the scientific evidence that afternoon naps can boost productivity, and I understand the appeal of companies installing nap rooms. Instead of a private nap room, however, I recently visited a startup that installed hammocks just off the lobby, so employees could swing while they snooze.”

Really? The first thing a visitor sees when entering the door is your employees sleeping at work? Is that the message you want to send? www.hbr.com

At times I see examples of this perk warfare going a bit too far. #cre

But then suddenly, the party is over. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here…..” booms over the speakers.

Wait-why? Well….the sales guys didn’t get the order. Or maybe the board looked at the real estate proposal and uttered words I can’t use here. Perhaps there is uncertainty from the bank or M&A is in your future.

There are a million scenarios that can occur that would dump water on our real estate deals. I know, it’s no fun, but as Mom would say, she’s proud of you anyway.

Plop Plop Fizz Fizz

While there’s no perfect solution (this IS a hangover and it’s going to hurt a bit), let me suggest three quick strikes that can help control cost or mitigate increases.

Party Like it’s 1999! (iStock)

(1) Forward Sub

Many companies are struggling in tight markets, which means many real estate directors are taking more space than they need at the moment. This results in what the industry calls “shadow space.” Also, the process of looking for space that is not officially on the market yet is called searching for a “forward vacancy. “

Now that you are up on the jargon, here’s the idea: approach suppliers, sister companies, friends at the club and work your broker to find these pockets of shadow space.

Perhaps you can create a “forward sublease” from a supplier, for example. So, you take their extra-unused space for a period of time. The supplier’s CFO would be happy to have the dollars and you can park your people for 12-18 months till we see how this project’s really going to go. Oh, and you can get a discount to market in the sublease and perhaps even furniture.

(2) Do Si Do Your Partner Round

Just as picking your significant other is really, really important, so is picking your landlord. Think about it — your office lease can last longer than many marriages (sadly).

So, the first success strategy is to complete some due diligence. Make sure the landlord appears to be well funded, progressive, and holds assets for a reasonable length of time. In today’s world of social media, a search on Twitter or other venues will tell you a lot. Now, not all complaining Tweets are valid, but worth looking into.

Secondly, I personally have seen the tenant community get weak on negotiating operating expenses. I know, it’s like reading a tire catalog. But you will thank me in 24 months when those pass throughs start to hit.

In most US class A office leases, operating expenses can comprise as much as 50% of the total rent. Work with your broker and real estate attorney and invest time in this provision. You may be shocked at what landlords are trying to pay on your dime.

(3) Density with Dignity

I know, it’s all the rage. Let’s cram ‘em in tight. But I’m actually not a fan of putting people who are in the office 80% of the time too close together.

However, the sales guys and even mid and senior level executives are gone a lot. The industry has a fancy term for how often you are in the office: your “utilization rate.”

What we are realizing is we are paying for the space used or not. The AC runs, the lights burn, the rent rolls. It’s kind of like leaving your car running parked in your driveway overnight – Ack!

Determine which parts of your workforce have mobile proclivities and work with one of the major real estate brokers to develop a flexible workplace. A workplace strategist says to newly liberated executives “I didn’t take away your office, I gave you a building.” You really can and do work anywhere – let’s prove it.

Here’s a bit of math to help you with this approach: 1 executive in 200 feet at $50 per square foot rent cost $10,000 a year for just the office.

Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate

Hang in there friends. It’s a tough time to be a real estate director, CFO or tenant rep broker. If you have other creative ideas on how to reduce or mitigate costs, I’d love to hear from you.

February 22nd, 2016

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Where Young College Graduates Are Choosing to Live“When young college graduates decide where to move, they are not just looking at the usual suspects, like New York, Washington and San Francisco. Other cities are increasing their share of these valuable residents at an even higher rate and have reached a high overall percentage, led by Denver, San Diego, Nashville, Salt Lake City and Portland, Ore., according to a report.” www.nytimes.com

Branding in the Age of Social Media“To solve (the) puzzle, we need to remember that brands succeed when they break through in culture. And branding is a set of techniques designed to generate cultural relevance. Digital technologies have not only created potent new social networks but also dramatically altered how culture works. Digital crowds now serve as very effective and prolific innovators of culture—a phenomenon I call crowdculture. Crowdculture changes the rules of branding—which techniques work and which do not. If we understand crowdculture, then, we can figure out why branded-content strategies have fallen flat—and what alternative branding methods are empowered by social media.” www.hbr.com

How to Boost Your Team’s ProductivityWe all have too much to do and too little time to do it. As a boss, you may have already learned how to plan, prioritize, and streamline your work. But how can you help your team members do the same? Should you dictate the processes and tools they use? How do you keep people from taking on too much and burning out or continuously spinning their wheels?. www.hbr.com

The Widely Misunderstood Aeronautics Event Captured In This Photograph“An F/A-18 Hornet over the Pacific Ocean, in July 1999. (Photo: Ensign John Gay/US Navy)
Ensign John Gay of the U.S. Navy had just returned home from several months aboard the U.S.S. Constellation in the South Pacific when his phone rang. A reporter for a photography magazine was on the line, hoping to discuss the 2000 World Press Photo Awards. Gay was perplexed: “Who are you and what do you want?” he said. The reporter explained that Gay’s photo had taken first prize in the Science and Technology category, which was news to Gay: he didn’t even know he’d entered the prestigious contest.” www.atlasobscura.com

February 8th, 2016

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Be Highly Successful: 9 Body Language Secrets of Exceptional People“Your body language is a fundamental part of who you are; chances are you don’t even think about how you stand, sit, and move. You should, of course, because other people instinctively pick up the nonverbal signals you send. Oddly enough, you also pick up on your own nonverbal signals. Gestures and postures make a dramatic impact on how you think, feel, and perform.

Want to use body language to be an even better you? Here are ten simple ways.” www.inc.com

After years of scant real gains despite steadily falling unemployment and healthy hiring, wages picked up significantly last month, a sign the job market could be tightening enough to force companies to pay more to attract and retain employees. www.nytimes.com

How to Boost Your Team’s ProductivityWe all have too much to do and too little time to do it. As a boss, you may have already learned how to plan, prioritize, and streamline your work. But how can you help your team members do the same? Should you dictate the processes and tools they use? How do you keep people from taking on too much and burning out or continuously spinning their wheels?. www.hbr.com

Can the ‘largest cleanup in history’ save the ocean?Great story of a young man making a difference: “Lourens Boot is a man of the sea. He windsurfs. His houseboat consistently ranks as one of the best Airbnb rentals in the world. He spent years working offshore exploration for Shell. But in spring of 2014, the Dutchman wanted something new. Why toil in the maintenance of the old order? So he quit Shell, attended Burning Man, and dropped by an offshore energy summit in Amsterdam.” www.washingtonpost.com

February 1st, 2016

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How Connected Spaces are Changing the Way We Work‘Whatever the catalyst is, “being able to outsource the more mundane tasks of office management enables people to focus on building something special and unique for their company,” said Dan. “Nobody starts a business to run an office, but somebody has to do it.” www.medium.com

A recent Deloitte study found that, “for 6 in 10 Millennials, a ‘sense of purpose,’ is part of the reason they chose to work for their current employers.” It goes on to say that, “when looking at their career goals, today’s Millennials are just as interested in how a business develops its people and how it contributes to society as they are in its products and profits.” www.inc.com

Five Habits Of Controlling PeopleMany people have the problem of being perspective-limited. They can’t see things any differently than they do — they can’t even consider the possibility that thoughtful people could see things differently. If you disagree with them, you are simply wrong. If they care enough about the topic, you are not just wrong to disagree — you are evil or stupid, as well. www.forbes.com

January 25th, 2016

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Markets’ Panic Incongruent With Economic RealityMany of the world’s biggest stock markets, including the U.K.’s and Japan’s, are now in bear-market territory, that is off 20% or more from their peak. With its 1.6% slump yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 9.5% on the year.

Yet if there’s no sign of similar stress in the broader economy, why pay attention to the financial indexes that, as the old joke goes, have predicted 9 out of the past 5 recessions? There are three possible reasons the market selloff could be cause for concern. www.wsj.com

Demystifying the Capital Stack
HThe capital stack refers to the organization of all capital contributed to finance a real estate transaction or a company. Focusing on a real estate transaction, the capital stack defines who has the rights (and in what order) to the income and profits generated by the property throughout the hold period and upon sale. Perhaps more importantly, it defines who has rights to the actual asset in case of an uncured default.

When investing in commercial real estate through an online marketplace/platform or other means, it is important to understand the capital structure of a given transaction and the risks and rewards associated with each piece of the capital stack. Understanding the place of your investment in the capital stack is a crucial part of the due diligence process as it will help you quantify your maximum upside, and even more importantly, maximum downside. www.realtymogul.com

Five Habits Of Controlling PeopleMany people have the problem of being perspective-limited. They can’t see things any differently than they do — they can’t even consider the possibility that thoughtful people could see things differently. If you disagree with them, you are simply wrong. If they care enough about the topic, you are not just wrong to disagree — you are evil or stupid, as well. www.forbes.com

January 19th, 2016

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Five Habits Of Controlling PeopleMany people have the problem of being perspective-limited. They can’t see things any differently than they do — they can’t even consider the possibility that thoughtful people could see things differently. If you disagree with them, you are simply wrong. If they care enough about the topic, you are not just wrong to disagree — you are evil or stupid, as well. www.forbes.com

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/01/19/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-59/feed/0That Crazy Dow! Shake It Off CREhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/01/12/that-crazy-dow-shake-it-off/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2016/01/12/that-crazy-dow-shake-it-off/#commentsTue, 12 Jan 2016 10:43:00 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4608Hey, what happened to our positive economic outlook? Last I checked when we clinked the New Years champagne, we were very confident in 2016. Yes sir, a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage!

Then this happened….

The Wall Street Journalreported on Saturday the 9th: “The Dow industrials tumbled more than 1,000 points this week, marking the worst first five days of any year, as volatility across the globe rattled investors.”

And the New York Times: “Worries that China’s huge economy is slowing down have prompted a dismal start to the new year. That has helped send the price of oil plunging to its lowest level since 2004, the latest blow to American energy companies.”

The Financial Timespronounced the first few trading days of 2016 were “the worst start to the market year in two decades.”

What in the world is going on here? Should we all buy protein bars and water for our emergency bunkers?

You Observe a Lot By Watching – Yogi Berra

Just in time to understand this global financial cold, I attended a joint CoreNet/CREW real estate forecast in Atlanta on January 7th. Dr. Marci Rossell, Former Chief Economist, CNBC was the keynote speaker and did her normal terrific job of explaining how we got to such a troubling spot seemingly so quickly (this is her 9th year of forecasting in Grits country).

Me hearing the good news on our economy (iStock)

“While the narrative around China seems to be changing before our very eyes, their slowdown actually began 2 years ago,” she said. “The Chinese stock market peaked in June of 2015, and this situation we are in is, in fact, a debt crisis, not a stock market crisis.” We are in the third waive of debt problems; US first, Greece second and now the Chinese, she said.

She went on to explain that the Chinese launched a giant spending spree a few years ago to the tune of $660 billion on an incentives program to prop up their economy. Marci called the program the “worst gross allocation of resources the world has ever seen.” She reported that there are multiple major office buildings that will never have tenants all over China. My, what a contrast to the US.

Now that the Chinese stimulus party is over and they’ve slammed on the spending brakes, the world is impacted. One way this issue presents itself is in commodity prices. The good news is metals, energy and food will get cheaper. The bad news is some will be losers as a result, including US farmers and their suppliers.

Let The Good Times Roll – BB King

But Marci helped us understand that on the nation by nation level, there will be two huge winners in all this turmoil: India and the United States. India has the educated labor that the world needs. The US also has labor, a fully recovered housing market and cheap energy. Plus our economy is at a great cadence already – we are off and running.

I then rang up Ken McCarthy, Cushman & Wakefield’s Principal Economist and asked him about our potentially troubling situation. He was immediately very optimistic about the US also, and specifically the commercial real estate markets.

Some of his comments:

Despite the buffeting from global uncertainty, the U.S. economy remains fundamentally sound with GDP growth expected at somewhere between 2.5% and 3.0% in 2016. Consumers are expected to boost spending as wage growth accelerates and the benefits of lower oil prices increase discretionary income.

Job growth was robust in both 2014 and 2015 and we expect more of the same in 2016. After adding more than 3.1 million jobs in 2014 and an additional 2.6 million in 2015, the U.S. economy is projected to add 2.5 million jobs in 2016. This would make the 2014-16 period the strongest for job growth since 1997-99. (Note that the Dow crested 7,000 for the first time that year…should have bought AAPL then!)

As the U.S. economy continues to shift toward services, office using employment is likely to grow even more rapidly. We anticipate an additional 800,000 office using jobs to be created in 2016.

With most companies working to use office space more efficiently, the overall impact on occupancy may not be as great as it was in the past. Nevertheless, job growth will lead to more demand for space and lower vacancy rates in most markets.

Take Two Aspirin and Call Me In The Morning – Dr. Feelgood

What a relief, then. The US has a positive diagnoses from two experts. But you didn’t really need me to tell you – you see it too. The labor markets are frothy, the buildings are full and seemingly everyone is working on huge deals and big expansions. It is not a mirage; we WILL indeed have a great year in US real estate.

So, put your head down and make it happen in your job this year. If your gig is to make deals, I think you will be very happy in December 2016. And keep your eye on the long term relative to the abymsal stock market. What goes down, must come up, especially when Wall Street realizes that the US will survive this onset of Asian unpleasantness. As a friend of mine said recently when discussing the precipitous stock decline, “they just had a winter sale in the stock market.”

Smile and shake it off when you hear news on China. In 2016 it’ll be OK after all in the good ol’ US of A.

January 11th, 2016

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

U.S. Office Rents Jump in Q4U.S. office rents increased at their fastest pace in seven years in 2015 as robust job gains and lagging construction continued to create tighter market conditions in most markets. U.S. office markets absorbed 21.3 million square feet (msf) of office space in the fourth quarter of 2015, up 2% from the previous quarter but down 1.1% from the fourth quarter of a year ago. For all of 2015, net absorption registered at 81.7 msf, which is the highest level since 2006. The national office vacancy rate fell 80 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2014 to 13.9%. www.cushwake.com

How Age and Gender Affect Self-ImprovementBased on overwhelming research in the social sciences, we know that it is easier to change a person’s behavior than to change their attitudes. And mindset – whether “proving” or “improving” — is most certainly a complex set of attitudes. We recommend that anyone wanting to move toward a growth or improving mindset begin by asking for feedback from colleagues. Start with small doses and gradually increase the amount and frequency of the feedback you are willing to hear. www.hbr.com

Telecommuting Can Make the Office a Lonely Place, a Study SaysIn a study of a Fortune 100 company in Silicon Valley that freely allowed off-site work, the researchers found that the employees who chose to continue working in the office ended up feeling lonely and disconnected. Many of these people came into work because they desired social interaction, and yet they found themselves deprived of the convivial lunches, spontaneous hallway interactions and impromptu office conversations that can be so energizing www.nytimes.com

January 4th, 2016

Happy New Year!

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How Cisco Gets Brutally Honest Feedback to Top LeadersAny CEO would agree that having a strong core of seasoned executives running the C-suite is critical. Yet many organizations haven’t developed beyond the hunch phase in terms of knowing how strong their top leaders really are. At Cisco, we designed an in-depth executive assessment to help us profile each of our topmost leaders: strengths, development needs, aspirations, strategic capabilities, blind spots, operational capabilities, how they develop their teams, how they fare in big-stage versus one-on-one communications, and so on. www.hbr.com

December 14th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Cost Vs. Value in Corporate Real EstateWhen planning a real estate strategy, questions about space utilization arise early on in the conversation. According to a Gensler research study, 83% of corporate real estate executives rank space utilization as the most important metric for making effective workplace decisions. However, with workplaces shifting from dedicated seating to free address environments, utilization data only provides one piece of the puzzle. Utilization addresses when a space is used, and supplementing that with how a space is used can create a broader picture, representative of both the cost and value of corporate real estate. www.gensleron.com

What’s The Difference Between A Manager And A Leader?We haven’t taught them that anybody can have a title and boss people around. Just having a manager, supervisor or team leader title doesn’t make anyone a leader! A leader is someone who looks inward. Leaders don’t assume they have all the answers. They know that they can’t be successful without being humble enough to listen to the people around them. www.forbes.com

KPIs And Corporate Stupidity“Key Performance Indicators,” said Marilyn. “I have to keep track of about fifteen things that I do and I have numbers to hit every week. The correlation between hitting my KPI targets and actually getting my work done is a very weak correlation. I could do a fantastic job during the week and move our company forward a lot and at the same time miss all my KPI targets.”

“So the yardsticks themselves are broken — the measures,” I suggested. “Not only that,” said Marilyn, along with hundreds of other working people I’ve met over the years in similar circumstances. “It’s not only that the yardsticks are poorly designed.

“There’s no way any measurements could keep up with the changes in our business. We are on the front lines.” www.forbes.com

December 7th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Andy Mills, former chairman on Thomson Financial, and a mentor of mine, keeps a “gift notebook” in which he writes down little observations or things he hears from the people closest to him. When his wife’s birthday or son’s graduation is coming up and he needs a gift, he turns to the book. When you make keen observations, note them somewhere.

When first meeting someone, a common conversational entree is to ask about their background. “I’m so thankful that Joanne introduced us — but I don’t actually know how you two know each other,” I said to a potential business partner. “Oh we go way back,” he said. “As freshman we were in an improvisation group together.” Done. As a thank you, I did a little research on improv. Are there theaters where he lives? Could I send him tickets to a show? What about a book or an article? I find a book called Improv, the bible of improv it turns out, used in tech companies as mandatory reading for how to relate to other people. So my thank you is a hand written note paper-clipped to the cover of the small paperback edition of the book. Total cost is about $25 with shipping.

Once you pickup on something that a person cares about, showing gratitude can be pretty easy — and fun. Seven practices to consider: www.hbr.com

Once you pickup on something that a person cares about, showing gratitude can be pretty easy

How to Build the Best Networking Event PossibleAs any conference organizer will tell you, booking high-profile speakers is crucial for attracting attendees, but great networking opportunities are what keep people coming back to conferences year after year. So how do you create an environment where perfect strangers will do more than just shake hands? www.inc.com

28 Dizzying Photos From The Top of the World’s Tallest SkyscrapersWorkers will snap pictures while doing maintenance on the towers. Or maybe a journalist will seek a special permit to photograph the towers. Or maybe a daredevil (who, after researching this piece, I’ve discovered is most likely to be a young Russian man) will elude the building’s guards, climb all the way to the top with no safety gear, and take a terrifying photo of the city that lies beneath. However the pictures are taken, here are some of the most dizzying, mind-blowingly awesome pictures we’ve been able to find from mankind’s tallest creations. www.inc.com

The Eclectic Tech WorkplaceSince the first dot-com era, technology firms have rewritten the rules of workplace design, eschewing traditional office towers in favor of renovated warehouses and shrinking individual desk space to make room for more collaborative areas. Today’s tech companies increasingly internalize the mix of uses found in cities, incorporating elements as varied as cafés and vegetable gardens. Design inspiration may come from a building’s historic elements, a company’s founding stories, and the interests of the workers themselves, lending the workplace a feeling of authenticity and personalization. The following ten projects—all completed during the past three years—include adapted textile factory buildings and liquor distribution warehouses, workplaces with amphitheaters and secret rooms, and a net-zero-energy structure. www.ubanland.com

November 30th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How Facebook Keep Scaling It’s CultureMaybe the most tangible sign of Facebook’s culture—at least to visiting outsiders—is the inspirational signage on its walls, most of which involves slogans encouraging staffers to regard their work as important to the world, experiment early and often, and empathize with the needs of Facebook users to get workers in the door. One way they do this is by building elaborate marketing programs designed to capture the attention of talent. It’s called employment branding, and it’s how companies lure you to check out their job postings. www.fastcompany.com

What Is the Real Cost of SocialAn infographic by Focus.com uncovers some of the costs of using social media for marketing, “from staff costs to external fees, advertising and more, and discusses whether the ROI makes social media spending worth the cost.” www.socialmediatoday.com

Top 10 real estate trends for 2016“The real estate industry’s traditional focus on big cities and large employers is shifting significantly as small businesses emerge as the growth engine for the U.S. economy,” Mitch Roschelle, a partner at PwC, said in a release. “This is creating disruption in the office sector as it finds ways to create new space models to accommodate these employers.”www.constructiondive.com

The Startup Buzzword Almost Everyone Uses IncorrectlyYou’ve probably use the verb disrupt to describe something surprising or innovative–whether it’s your business model, your product itself, or even a feature of one of your products. And you’re probably using the word incorrectly. It’s not entirely your fault. Ever since Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen first proposed his theory of disruptive innovation in 1995, the term has been widely co-opted and misappropriated by the business community. The result is what often happens when words get misused by the masses: The word assumes the misused meaning. Aggravate used to mean “worsen.” Now it also means “annoy.” www.inc.com

Disru­ptive: The word assumes the misused meaning. Aggravate used to mean worsen. Now it also means annoy.

So let’s get this out of the way; drones are scary. They are used by military types to wreak havoc and by various government agencies to spy. They are also frightning spy machines that can be used for any number of improper purposes. Oh, and the FAA will fine you for using them improperly.

But there must be some redeeming uses for this amazing technology. After all, fire if used poorly can be devastating, but a crackling fire during the winter is a delightful experience.

Do drones, UAV’s or whatever we’d like to call them have a place in the corporate real estate world?

At the recent CoreNet Global Summit in LA, I moderated a panel* on this subject. The theme of the conference was “Disruptive Innovation”, and this topic seemed to fit right in.

Drones and the I word

Invasive or innovative? They are certainly disruptive technology. I feel like I have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other: “Drones are evil!” “No, drones are cool!”

Like lots of disruptive technologies – cars and airplanes – there is a lot of skepticism and worry as they evolve. As an historical data point, no one would ride elevators when they first came out. In 1852, Elisha Otis introduced the safety elevator, which prevented the fall of the cab if the cable broke. Then the masses piled in, content to ride to the next level in life on an Otis.

So, despite the scary side of drones, can we afford to NOT look at the technology? I’d be willing to bet if you move on down the road, your competition will try to understand and leverage all manner of automation including drones.

Use Me Now…and Later

My CoreNet panel (bios below) had some revealing insights from their own drone experiences.

Tomislav Zigo discussed some of the current (and legally authorized) uses of drones at his construction and build-to-suit company Clayco:

Construction site data collection and progressing tracking

Safety monitoring

Hard to reach building area monitoring and inspection

3D Modeling of sites and associated structures.

He talked about Clayco’s journey from one drone to their current fleet. “Drones have changed our business and given us a huge competitive edge,” he said.

Looking beyond, Tomislav opined that flying, terrestrial and even water based devices will combine into one technology platform. “Whether they are in the water or the air, these devices use the same circuits. They just use different methods to propel themselves around,” he said.

Peter Blake, Director of Flight Ops for data company Skycatch has current experience and use for drones in areas including:

Mining and agriculture

Utilities and railroads

Construction and disaster response

Peter discussed significant productivity improvements and faster cycle times. For example, in agriculture he suggested farmers have achieved a 10% improvement in crop yields by more efficient farming with drone technology. That totals a cool $9.5 billion annually. That one fact might justify this whole party.

Another use revolved around scarcity of labor: “Faced with a looming shortage of skilled construction workers in Japan, ‘Smart Construction’ was born to fill the gap with automated dozers and excavators. But existing methods like ground-based scanners couldn’t deliver the necessary terrain data at the level of speed and accuracy needed to power the heavy machinery.” “Skycatch, partnership with Komatsu, created the world’s first machine-to-machine automated construction equipment.” Now we’re talking real savings, plus a pretty cool job site!

As Peter looks to the future, he sees drones moving to real time analysis capabilities and seamless indoor to outdoor use. “The technology will just keep getting better, and very quickly,” he said.

We also discussed drones that allow one to mount an iPhone on a drone (a so called “phlony”). The iPhone has such advanced and cost effective technology that some are combining the two technologies to work.

Keep Calm and Drone On

Kitty Henry, likely the only real estate lawyer who is also a drone expert in the United States, worked to keep us in puns. Despite the current legal turbulence, she forecasted blue skies ahead once regulators level out and promulgate the forthcoming rules.

“Liability is a huge deal, just now,” said Kitty. “Even if you follow the rules and do everything right, getting basic liability insurance can be an adventure,” Kitty continued, heading for a high level legal perspective.

She also told us that the FAA is rushing out new regulations as quickly as they can. Apparently they are concerned about millions of drones that will be given as Christmas gifts this year. Maybe one will be under your tree?

There are a number of safety devices under development including leashes or tethers for these devices. These kinds of things make lawyers smile; I can attest from first hand experience.

Kitty gave a top down review of current drone regulations. We did discover a new app that shows where it’s legal to fly a drone in certain areas. This is the beginning of removing uncertainty around operating guidelines.

Bringing it in for a Landing

Based on our discussion in LA, I do think we are on the precipice of a huge technological change that will definitely impact #CRE. At this moment drones are being used to showcase assets with stunning new perspectives, allow facilities inspections at whole new levels and provide new ways to secure large campuses. Perhaps the most exciting use now is the ability to gather huge caches of data and use the information to be smarter about construction, maintenance or energy consumption. More automated construction projects and even automated building services beckon in the future. George Jetson on line 2.

In some sense it feels like June 29th, 2007, which of course was the date of the release of the first iPhone. Who could have envisioned that those devices would be with us every step of our lives and be virtually indispensible?

We are on the precipice of a huge techno­logica­l change that will definitely impact #CRE with #drone innovation

On a corporate real estate level, drones are like brand new babies in their cribs. But they will grow up quickly into young millennial devices. It’ll be fun to watch how this changes our industry. I also look forward to hearing of the many uses of this technology we haven’t event thoughtof yet. Feel free to comment your ideas below.

I hope to see your drone pictures from this Christmas. And no more selfies, send me your dronies, will you?

Peter is a distinguished leader and decorated combat veteran in the aviation field. Military career culminated in a highly selective role as Chief Executive Officer (commander) of a Marine Corps fighter squadron. He is a Sloan Fellow from Stanford University and has worked on the Skycatch team for about a year and a half. He previously was a strategy and technology consultant at another firm.

Tomislav Zigo, St Louis, Missouri Director of Virtual Design and Construction, Clayco which is one of the top design build contractors in the US. He is a leader in Building Information Management (“BIM”) systems.

Over the past 19 years Tomislav has been an advocate of digital technology implementation as a researcher, designer and over past six years as a designer – builder. His experience includes work in the vanguard of BIM methodology implementation on large healthcare, institutional and industrial projects; research work in the field of Building Performance Analysis; optimization and use of mobile and immersive technology and mentorship positions in a number of local and national architectural firms during their transition toward BIM adoption.

Currently he leads Clayco’s VDC department and teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

Kitty chair’s the firm’s office and industrial leasing team. She works with multiple institutional landlords for whom she drafts and negotiates leases. In addition, she represent tenants of all types, from large corporations whose leases she handles on a nationwide basis to businesses opening their first location.

November 16th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

The True Qualities Of Authentic LeadersAuthentic leadership is built on your character, not your style. My mentor Warren Bennis said, “Leadership is character. It is not just a superficial question of style. It has to do with who we are as human beings and the forces that shaped us. Style is the outward manifestation of one’s authentic leadership, not one’s inner self. To become authentic leaders, people must adopt flexible styles that fit the situation and capabilities of their teammates. www.forbes.com

9 Signs You Should Run Away From That Job OfferAs a result of the perceived talent shortage, executive teams are putting pressure on recruiting departments to get workers in the door. One way they do this is by building elaborate marketing programs designed to capture the attention of talent. It’s called employment branding, and it’s how companies lure you to check out their job postings. www.inc.com

6 Tools That Make Working at Home Seem Like Working at the OfficeBeing stuck at your office desk is so 20th century. Today’s employees expect to be able to work from wherever they are. Independent contractors working from one-person offices need to communicate smoothly with their customers’ teams. Emails and conference calls are not the best way to make any of this happen. www.hbr.com

November 8th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

10 Workplace Trends You’ll See In 2016These trends are based on hundreds of conversations with human resource executives and workers, a series of national and global online surveys and secondary research from over a 100 different sources. The major economic and business themes over the past year have been focused on companies doing more with fewer resources, the skills gap and further advances in technology that have given rise to security issues, yet productivity and health increases. www.forbes.com

Next year, over 3.6 million baby boomers are set to retire and more than a fourth of millennial workers will become managers. #cre

How To Give Critical Feedback, EffectivelyHillary Clinton once said, “It is important to learn how to take criticism seriously but not personally.” It’s excellent advice, but if you’ve ever been criticized (and let’s face it, who hasn’t?) you’ll know that it’s easier said than done, even when it’s given in the gentlest of ways with the best of intentions. That’s because hearing critical feedback strikes at the heart of two core human needs — the need to learn and grow, and the need to be accepted just the way we are. Consequently, even a gentle suggestion to do something differently can leave us feeling wounded. Encouragement not to “take it personally” often does little to soften the blow. www.forbes.com

Critics can be your best friend if you will listen to them but don’t get dragged down by them. #cre

6 Tools That Make Working at Home Seem Like Working at the OfficeBeing stuck at your office desk is so 20th century. Today’s employees expect to be able to work from wherever they are. Independent contractors working from one-person offices need to communicate smoothly with their customers’ teams. Emails and conference calls are not the best way to make any of this happen. www.inc.com

November 2nd, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

A Mentor Isn’t Enough. You Also Need an Advocate.No doubt, mentors are important. They can help you navigate forward, pushing you in the right direction. They can be a key pillar in your support system and they help drive you forward.vWhat a woman (and men too) really need, though, is someone pulling from the top. We need advocates. www.wsj.com

The Real Reason You Didn’t Get That JobIf you didn’t get a job you applied for or even interviewed for, it doesn’t mean you did a bad job at the interview. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.

It doesn’t even mean that someone else was better-suited to the job than you were.

This article lists ten reasons that may explain why you didn’t get a job you applied for, although you may be well-qualified for the position. www.forbes.com

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/11/02/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-51/feed/0Lawyers Guns & Money: Three Things You’ll Need to Get Office Space in 2016http://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/11/01/lawyers-guns-money-three-things-youll-need-to-get-office-space-in-2016/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/11/01/lawyers-guns-money-three-things-youll-need-to-get-office-space-in-2016/#commentsSun, 01 Nov 2015 19:17:28 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4495Of late in the financial pages, there have been some murmurings about a slow down in the economy. Well, I’m here to report that is in fact NOT the case in the US Commercial Office Market.

➢ U.S. office vacancy declined to 14.2% – a 20 basis point decline from last quarter.
➢ 71 of the 84 markets tracked reported occupancy gains in the third quarter.
➢ YTD deliveries total 35.4 MSF. Demand has exceeded new supply by 20 MSF (emphasis added).

Best Product Name of the Year?

As I was contemplating these rather stunning stats strolling through the local grocery market (yes, I like to think and shop), I came across a beer called “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” I thought it had the best name ever and an apt description of the current real estate market. Some things just have a way of working out.

I learned later that the beer tastes quite nice, in case you were wondering.

But back to the blog.

To start with on the supply side, office developers have been having a tough time getting new projects secured, funded and underway. One major issue is that in many US markets, residential developers can afford to pay more for dirt than their colleagues in office.

Another is the shock and awe of the rental rates in newly constructed office buildings. With cost that can be 20-40% higher than existing buildings, my friends in the end user community now have an excuse to commence to drinking. Another round, Joe?

Demand For Space

Like a 21 year old in a bar for the first time, companies around America are hiring in big and somewhat gangly spurts. In fact, the current US unemployment rate at 5.1% is as low as it’s been since March of 2008, over 7 years ago. For reference, the first iPhone was 9 months old at that point. It almost seems quaint, doesn’t it?

The results of this sometimes impetuous growth are some tricky situations. More and more, we are getting calls from stressed corporate executives who lower their voice as they mutter, “We are OUT of SPACE!” “What can we do in the short term?” is the usual next line.

Corporate America was lulled to sleep by the terrible market we experienced for so many years. Leaders simply assumed that space would be available and that landlords would be delighted to see them coming.

Ownership is indeed happy to see prospects show up at their buildings, but they are now often in the position of being able to select the tenant with better credit, superior economics (to the building) and faster decision making.

Look Ahead

Despite the occasional whisper of bad news, according to an IMF Forecast the unemployment rate will drop below 5% next year and keep heading down.

It seems an easy call: supply will finally kick in with development UP across the US. The financing markets are back and rent is surging across all major markets. Combine this with growing tenants and diminishing space options, and most every developer is, well, giddy.

What about the poor occupier that pays the bills? Another C&W forecast sums it up nicely:

“The general lack of quality space is seeing tenants investigate their real estate options, and some are moving proactively before their lease expirations in order to lock in quality space before further rental gains are recorded. Businesses are coming off the sidelines and are executing plans for growth. In fact, absorption levels are anticipated to be robust through 2016 despite (much needed) new supply, leaving the office vacancy rate at its lowest point since 2008.”

So as I continue to push my shopping cart, and now having thought through this issues I have a few conclusions: You will indeed need lawyers to help in 2016 and beyond. Let’s hope you don’t really need guns, or this may be a different kind of blog. You will most certainly need money for that fancy new millennial magnet office space.

But if you’ll pardon the promotion, what you really need the most is a broker who knows his or her markets cold.

There is a dangerous and very fast moving rip tide out there in the world of corporate real estate. Don’t be a victim; get the help you need now.

Then, when your latest office project is secure, you can sit on your back deck and relax with my new favorite beer.

October 26th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

5 Work Stresses You Can Alleviate with TechFrom the pressure to keep up with social media to the low-level irritation produced by a world in which something is always beeping or buzzing, technology can produce its own set of anxieties.

At the very least, you need to organize your devices, accounts and online time so that you reduce your tech-induced stress. That means letting go of the idea that you need to keep up with social media, reply to every email and accumulate the maximum number of LinkedIn connections. www.hbr.org

Alleviated tech stress: let go of the idea that you need to keep up with social media, reply to every email #cre

Yes, you spend a lot of time on the internet every day. And yes, you have a browser of choice. (Personally, I’m Chrome for life.) But did you know that your browser can do a lot more than just serve as the middleman between you and Google. In fact, it can actually be a handy tool for keeping you more organized. All you need to make that happen are a few handy little programs called extensions. www.forbes.com

Don’ Ignore the Horizontal: The Importance of Unrecognized SpacesIn Manhattan alone there is 5.3 million square feet of “leftover” space (think: unused lots, concrete medians in the middle of streets, etc.). To accommodate the growing population, while not just maintaining but actually improving quality of life, we must transform underutilized infrastructure to create new and more relevant uses. Updating and adding public spaces that provide relief in an increasingly dense city enables growth while enriching the human experience. www.gensleron.com

12 Weekend Habits of Highly Successful PeopleThe weekend will be here soon enough again. I’ve read countless articles about what successful people do on their weekends. Do you want to know the secret? It’s the same thing that they do every other day. As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”www.lifehack.org

October 19th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Success at Work, Failure at HomeThere’s a debate that rages in the corridors of VCs, startups, and other intense entrepreneurial centers, which is: Can you have it all? Aren’t the best CEOs and founders so ambitious, so driven, that they must sacrifice everything to make it work? We have seen couples struggle with this on a personal level, and there is almost always an imbalance that leads to deep sacrifices on one front or the other. www.medium.com

You’ve probably heard this sentiment before, stated as if it’s all but inevitable. But with 1.5 Billion monthly active users, its glaringly apparent that Facebook isn’t going anywhere. On the other hand, Facebook marketing is a vastly different platform altogether. Post planner’s article, “The Do’s and Don’ts of Facebook Pages”, provides advice on how you should (and definitely shouldn’t) attract potential customers on Facebook.www.socialmediatoday.com

Some say that we are in the midst of the content shock era — but I’m convinced that after the shock wears off, we’ll adapt. Because that’s what we do to survive, as humans and as marketers. www.craftofmarketing.com

October 12th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How to Use a Standing Desk Without Annoying Your Co-WorkersThe kinds of offices that welcome standing desks often have an open plan. Seated co-workers may fear that risers will catch them Internet shopping or texting with friends when they should be working. There are subtle ways to show that you’re not snooping on anyone from your lofty position. “Go about your business with headphones,” Mr. Carter said. And keep your eyes on your own pixels. www.NYTimes.com

October 5th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

The Smartest Building in the WorldIt knows where you live. It knows what car you drive. It knows who you’re meeting with today and how much sugar you take in your coffee. (At least it will, after the next software update.) This is the Edge, and it’s quite possibly the smartest office space ever constructed. www.bloomberg.com

Hey Economists—Is the CRE Future Bright?The latest three-year economic forecast from the Urban Land Institute’s Center for Capital Markets and Real Estate, released Wednesday, calls for the CRE market to “continue expanding at healthy and fairly steady levels for 2015 through 2017.” And in a lively accompanying webinar on Wednesday morning, three industry experts fleshed out some of the areas explored by the forecast. www.cpexecutive.com

Goodbye, Conference Table A little bit of innovative design thinking over the past decade has brought about the ascent of auditorium-style seating for gathering large groups of employees, particularly in startup offices, where a weekly all-hands meeting is common. www.inc.com

The 1 Word You Should Never Use to Start an EmailWriting emails has become little different from opening your mouth and letting unedited words flow. The more we do it, the less we think. The more emails we pump out, the less we stop to think about the recipients. After all, no one thinks twice about copying us on a thousand dull missives whose second line we never get past. Still, emails annoy people. But there are ways to make them less annoying. www.inc.com

September 28th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How Reliable Is Office Employment for Evaluating Market Performance?Many who toil in real estate analysis like to use as many statistics as possible to evaluate how a property market is faring. In addition to the usual vacancy rate and rent trend analyses, other demand variables are sought to determine what is driving the market. The preferred metric for demand is employment, and for office demand, labor statistics are often whittled down to determine an “office using employment” measure. In theory, office employment growth should serve as a variable that correlates highly with office occupancy and rent trends, but as the economy has evolved and industrial classification systems have shifted the estimate for office employment may not capture all of those truly working in an office setting.. www.nreionline.com

Here’s Why Startups FailWhen startups go under, outside observers rush to catalogue the fallout. Did anyone use the product? Did they run out of money? Was the CEO too inexperienced? Now we have some answers from startup graveyard Autopsy.io. www.forbes.com

Cushman & Wakefield’s CEO Sets New CourseBrett White, who served as CBRE’s CEO for seven years before stepping down in 2012, has a formidable to-do list with the now complete merger. Besides integrating Cushman and DTZ, he must reduce debt, improve margins and build revenue in preparation for an expected initial public offering.

An IPO will likely be the exit plan of the investment group that has spent more than $3.5 billion in the past 12 months to buy Cushman, Chicago-based DTZ and Washington, D.C.-based Cassidy Turley. The group includes private-equity firm TPG, PAG Asia Capital and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. www.NYTimes.com

September 21, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

New Aerial Drone Footage Reveals Progress On Apple Inc. Campus 2Arial footage of Cupertino, Santa Clara shows the progress on the new construction site of Apple Inc. The project has reached its completion stage as the multi-level ring shaped building starts taking shape. A parking area, auditorium and the Tantau development program has also commenced which according to Apple reports would be housing 2,200 employees in an area of 600,000 square foot. The area would also comprise of a 1,740 capacity parking lot and two testing facilities. www.technewstoday.com

Drones + XSmall drones are advancing quickly. They used to be little else but sophisticated remote-controlled toys and people love to complain when we call them ‘drones’ because that implies that they are at least semi-autonomous (and maybe able to bomb a terrorist (and a few innocent bystanders)). But what’s happening now is that the technology is catching up with the term. Drones are becoming increasingly autonomous and that means they will open up a range of new business opportunities for startups in the very near future. www.techcrunch.com

What Does The Future Hold for the Corporate Campus?In the last few years, there has been a big move toward corporate consolidation on large, amenity-rich campuses. The factors driving this move are the need to consolidate corporate real estate holdings, a desire to create synergy between formerly segregated departments, and a push to enhance company unity by putting everyone on one campus. Adding retail services and health and wellness amenities to the mix helps recruit and retain the best talent.

Employees love the amenities and the indoor/outdoor connection these corporate campuses feature. What they don’t love are the commutes to and from them. While corporations try to select locations that are convenient for the bulk of their workforce, the cost and availability of large tracts of land often means campuses are located on the outskirts of the city center or in suburbia. This translates into much longer daily commutes for the people who have to work there. www.gensleron.com

Employees love the amenities of campuses. What they don’t love are the commutes.

Here’s Why Startups FailWhen startups go under, outside observers rush to catalogue the fallout. Did anyone use the product? Did they run out of money? Was the CEO too inexperienced?

Now we have some answers from startup graveyard Autopsy.io. A new site launched this year, Autopsy publishes a list of tech startup deaths, which to date includes 112 examples dating back to 2006. www.forbes.com

Consider that when you pick up “natural” pancake syrup from the grocery store, chances are that one of the listed ingredients will be “natural flavoring” — an oxymoron.

Similarly, when you shop for a wireless phone plan today, chances are that the carrier’s marketing contains the word “simple.” But when you browse the numerous options and fees, you’ll find they are anything but. Instead, we may be hitting peak complexity with phone plans. www.NYTimes.com

September 8th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Your Desk Says What Kind of Genius You AreLike everyone else, geniuses need a place to work. However, since every genius is different, they naturally have different ideas of the workspaces that will make them productive.

This post (excerpted from an excellent infographic from the U.K.-based design firm Made to Measure Blinds) shows the work areas belonging to seven of the greatest geniuses of all time. Based on the appearance of your desk, which type of genius might you be? www.inc.com

A quiet, reserved introvert is probably not what first came to mind. Aren’t entrepreneurs supposed to be gregarious and commanding—verbally adept and able to inspire employees, clients and investors with the sheer force of their personality? No wonder the advice for introverts who want to be entrepreneurs has long been some form of: “Be more extroverted.”

Now, though, business experts and psychologists are starting to see that guidance is wrong. It disregards the unique skills that introverts bring to the table—the ability to focus for long periods, a propensity for balanced and critical thinking, a knack for quietly empowering others—that may make them even better suited for entrepreneurial and business success than extroverts. www.wsj.com

Consider that when you pick up “natural” pancake syrup from the grocery store, chances are that one of the listed ingredients will be “natural flavoring” — an oxymoron.

Similarly, when you shop for a wireless phone plan today, chances are that the carrier’s marketing contains the word “simple.” But when you browse the numerous options and fees, you’ll find they are anything but. Instead, we may be hitting peak complexity with phone plans. www.NYTimes.com

August 31, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Steve Jobs’s management style has been described in many ways, both positive and negative. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying what he accomplished: Within a short time, he built the most successful company on the planet.

The video excerpt in this article shows excerpts of a company retreat that Jobs orchestrated during the first three months of the company. And it’s fascinating. www.inc.com

Ten Commercial Lease Definitions to Commit to MemorySigning a commercial lease can be a bit daunting, particularly if it’s your first experience with this sort of transaction. There are a variety of clauses and provisions that are fairly standard, and make a big difference in how the deal comes out for the tenant. As with any business move, it’s essential to be familiar with all of the language that’s used in the lease.

It’s always better to ask questions if you’re unsure about anything in a legal document. Rest assured, plenty of seasoned professionals do the same. If you want to get started boosting your commercial real estate I.Q., here are 10 essential commercial lease definitions you should commit to memory. www.leasematrix.com

What Really Motivates Workers in Their 20sAs we all know, young workers are a contemptible bunch. They’re “lazy,” and lack the admirable work ethic of their elders. They have an overblown sense of entitlement, believing they have some kind of right to walk right into a plum job in their early twenties rather than working their way up. They might even be a generation of narcissists, a consequence of their over-indulgent helicopter parents and a culture that favors giving every kid on the soccer team a trophy just for showing up. www.hbr.com

From Fool To Cool: How To Stay Calm, No Matter WhatLong ago, I was on the set of a Hollywood action movie, surrounded by some of the best martial arts fighters in the world. These guys could run up a wall, flip over backward, and kick someone on the way down. They could land flat on their backs and bounce up into a standing and ready position. They moved so fast, the director had to figure out how to slow down their images so that audiences would be able to see what happened.

I was talking to one of the fighters – I have no idea who he was – and mentioned something about not wanting to see what happened if I made a fighter like him angry.

“No, no, we never get angry,” he responded. “As soon as a fighter loses his temper, he has lost.” www.forbes.com

What Amazon’s Workplace Controversy Says About the Future of WorkThe harsh workplace that a New York Times story recently described plaguing Amazon represents an old-fashioned business model that will almost certainly disappear soon.The harsh workplace that a New York Times story recently described plaguing Amazon represents an old-fashioned business model that will almost certainly disappear soon. www.fortune.com

August 24, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Thanks in part to its ability to extract the most from employees, Amazon is stronger than ever. Its swelling campus is transforming a swath of this city, a 10-million-square-foot bet that tens of thousands of new workers will be able to sell everything to everyone everywhere. Last month, it eclipsed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the country, with a market valuation of $250 billion, and Forbes deemed Mr. Bezos the fifth-wealthiest person on earth.

Tens of millions of Americans know Amazon as customers, but life inside its corporate offices is largely a mystery. Secrecy is required; even low-level employees sign a lengthy confidentiality agreement. The company authorized only a handful of senior managers to talk to reporters for this article, declining requests for interviews with Mr. Bezos and his top leaders. www.NYTimes.com

What Does The Future Hold For The Corporate CampusMost companies correctly believe there is great value in having employees visit the “Mother Ship” on a regular basis so they can nurture relationships and further collaboration and innovation. Some companies like Yahoo, which formerly encouraged employee telecommuting, now insist employees work in the office. But what if you could satisfy both needs? What if you created free address satellite offices near employee homes for days when they don’t really need to be on the main campus? With the appropriate technology, employees could stay connected to the “Mother Ship” while enjoying the benefits of being close to home. Then the corporate campus could morph into more of a learning and collaboration center. www.gensleron.com

One essential step in public speaking successZiglar reminds his readers they “can never forget the great responsibility that comes with every invitation.” Speaking to an audience is helping an audience. You are essentially helping to direct them down a certain path, from award show presenters telling the audience who to cheer for to salespeople telling an audience what product would best enhance their life, a public speaker is directing the audience somewhere. www.ziglarvault.com

August 17, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How to Give Tough Feedback That Helps People GrowOver the years, I’ve asked hundreds of executive students what skills they believe are essential for leaders. “The ability to give tough feedback” comes up frequently. But what exactly is “tough feedback”? The phrase connotes bad news, like when you have to tell a team member that they’ve screwed up on something important. Tough also signifies the way we think we need to be when giving negative feedback: firm, resolute, and unyielding. www.hbr.com

Six Reasons Why Your College Major Doesn’t Matter
According to a recent study, 82% of 2015 graduates researched their field of choice before determining what major to pursue in college. When you look at this statistic through the lens of student loans and the 2008 recession, it comes as no surprise that students want to pursue careers that will enable them to pay off their hefty debt. www.forbes.com

8 Powerful Ways To Mold Your Children Into LeadersWhether they spend the bulk of their days in the mailroom or the corner office, we want our children to grow to be courageous, passionate and authentic. We want their actions to inspire other people to be their best, to get more out of life than they ever thought possible. www.forbes.com

Whether they are in the mailroom or the corner, we want our children to be courageous, passionate & authentic.

5 Tips For Getting Back To Work After A VacationThe vision of returning to the office after vacation and the reality usually have very little in common. While many of us expect to sit down at our desks after time away filled with boundless energy and restored creativity that will fuel new projects, what usually ends up happening is that we spend several scattered hours (or days) trying to process a deluge of emails and falling further behind on tasks that have built up in the interim. www.forbes.com

#Thank You For Sharing: How Social Media is Reshaping Work
The truth is that nowadays the majority of white collar work requires one thing and one thing only: connectivity to the online realm. We’re living in a world we where we don’t need to be in the office to do this thing called work. That can happen anywhere at any time.

If connectivity is all we need to work, can the digital working environments converge within physical workspaces? The devices we carry around in our pockets are increasingly designed to speak to one another. The baseline connectivity we have is creating a very interesting dynamic and changing how people are interacting with each other and using physical space. www.gensleron.com

August 9, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

7 benefits of using a co-working space
Working at home is not practical for a small business if you want to expand. Traditional office space is often too expensive and can require years of commitment. Executive suites and co-working spaces can offer a more affordable and flexible alternative with many baked-in benefits. Here are some of the perks you can expect with a shared office space from a couple of the companies that offer them. www.chicagotribune.com

#Thank You For Sharing: How Social Media is Reshaping Work
The rapid growth of mobile technologies threatens to push the desktop PC into extinction. When this happens, the most pertinent question for workplace designers will be what is the purpose of the desk, the piece of furniture that has long been the anchor of white collar work? The truth is that nowadays the majority of white collar work requires one thing and one thing only: connectivity to the online realm. We’re living in a world we where we don’t need to be in the office to do this thing called work. That can happen anywhere at any time.

If connectivity is all we need to work, can the digital working environments converge within physical workspaces? www.gensleron.com

The growth of mobile threatens to push the PC into extinction. Then what is the purpose of the desk? #cre

5 Tips For Getting Back To Work After A VacationThe vision of returning to the office after vacation and the reality usually have very little in common. While many of us expect to sit down at our desks after time away filled with boundless energy and restored creativity that will fuel new projects, what usually ends up happening is that we spend several scattered hours (or days) trying to process a deluge of emails and falling further behind on tasks that have built up in the interim. www.forbes.com

What It’s Really Like to Be An Airline PilotI guess the sense that I was trying to capture in the book is the one I had as a child. I can’t think of an easier thing to find a sort of basic human joy in. It’s really quite a spiritual experience, and it’s also this amazing technological achievement. A lot of pilots have those things as the two halves of their personalities. They have a romantic sensibility about the world but are also amazed by science and technology.

Flying is a very old dream of our species, and when we look out at a 747 waiting to take us halfway across the world, we’re looking at a dream come true. It maybe doesn’t feel like that because we do it so often now, but planes are literally a dream that’s come true. www.nytimes.com

July 19, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How to Write The Perfect Tweet
80% of B2B companies are using Twitter, reports Brafton research. Are these companies tweeting in a way to increase awareness, engage customers and move buyers toward conversion? You need to be able to talk the talk of the customer to sell or to market to them effectively. www.linkedin.org

Clashing Over Office Clutter With more employees working in open-plan offices and shared workspaces, look for more clashes over clutter. The average space allotted per worker has dropped as much as 21% since 1997, according to the International Facility Management Association in Houston. Storage space is shrinking too, and not everyone is keeping up with the push for a paperless office. www.wsj.com

10 times in history when adults earned the Eagle Scout awardIf you’re like me, you were pretty surprised to read that there was a time in BSA history when adults could earn the Eagle Scout award.No, I’m not talking about special allowances that allow Scouts with developmental disabilities or severe physical challenges to earn the award after their 18th birthday. Those special advancement rules still exist today. I’m referring to the time before 1965 when adults could start and finish the requirements for Eagle well past their teenage years. www.scoutingmagazine.org

July 13th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Moving Offices? 6 Lessons That Will Save You Time and MoneyImagine your company’s sales are through the roof, your team is growing by the day and morale is at an all-time high. In fact, your company is doing so well that it’s about to bust through the walls and onto the streets. This is a great problem to have — an entrepreneur’s dream, really. However, when business development is top of mind, it’s easy to forget the importance of your environment. Increasing business bandwidth means scaling both your team and your office space. But finding the right spot can be harder than you think.

During past office relocations, I discovered that an ounce of early prevention can save you a ton of headaches. www.inc.com

Office designers have been trying to adapt offices for decades to better suit the nature of work, as well as meet company demands for cost-cutting and integrating new technology. Over the 20th century, the most popular office design has evolved from rows of offices with doors, to an open plan designed to facilitate collaboration, to the cubicle, back to an open office plan, and now to more mixed-used spaces. www.washingtonpost.com

Top 10 Reasons Your Brand Needs To Be On TwitterDespite the microblogging social media network’s rapid rise to popularity, some business owners are still reluctant to commit to regularly engaging on Twitter. While they may have a Twitter profile set up, many are unsure whether investing their time and energy into daily interactions on the platform are worthwhile.

This article will outline the top 10 reasons why your brand needs to be on Twitter. www.forbes.com

One huge mistake people make when renting carsRental companies continually upgrade their fleets with newer-model cars, which means many now have the latest infotainment systems, which let you connect, or “pair,” your smartphone via Bluetooth with the car. This lets you take calls over the car’s audio system, dial from the center console, get directions or stream your music. Others include a USB connection so you can do all that and charge your phone.

When you connect your gadget to a car with Bluetooth, the car stores your phone number to make it easier to connect later. It also stores your call logs, including any contacts you dialed. Just one problem: All that information is saved inside the system and just sitting around for the next renter to find. www.usatoday.com

July 6th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Five-Click Leadership: How Introverts Can Get Ahead
Introverts have great strengths. A current research project on leadership involves interviewing the CEOs of bigger firms about introverts in their C-suite and asking them about the considerable strengths that introverts bring to the table. Based on this research, we have come to believe that introverts are typically better listeners; they wait for others to express their ideas before they jump in with theirs; they don’t need to be at the centre of every conversation; and when they present their ideas, they tend come out more fully formed and well-thought-out. Many business executives value this approach as a way to ensure that the ideas of all team members are being given due consideration, so that there is no valuable insight going overlooked. www.forbes.com

Facing Elite Bloat, Airlines Move the Goal Posts“When everyone’s an elite flier, no one is,” Delta Air Lines explained in an email to frequent fliers last fall.The email included what would seem to be bad news for Medallion fliers like me, who earn special status on the airline by flying at least 25,000 miles a year. We would be required to spend more on airline tickets to reach a given tier of status than was previously required. www.nytimes.com

Sharing Data, but Not Happily
Should consumers be able to control how companies collect and use their personal data? At a dinner honoring privacy advocates in Washington, Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, gave a speech in which he endorsed this simple idea. Yet his argument leveled a direct challenge to the premise behind much of the Internet industry — the proposition that people blithely cede their digital bread crumbs to companies in exchange for free or reduced-priced services subsidized by advertising. www.nytimes.com

To your success, Ken

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/07/06/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-38/feed/0A Face For Radio Part Deuxhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/06/17/a-face-for-radio-part-deux/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/06/17/a-face-for-radio-part-deux/#commentsWed, 17 Jun 2015 18:44:02 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4315It was really almost like having a cup of coffee with a friend. In fact, I was having a cup of coffee with a friend – and tens of thousands of people listening on 44 stations around the US. Our coffee klatch was in fact very, very public – and nothing off the record!

Live from somewhere a little north of Atlanta!

It was my second time on the Commercial Real Estate Show and I was in a brand new studio with HD cameras trained on me. Apparently they put video clips online too. Hope I don’t look funny in the pancake makeup….

Michael Bull, who has been a friend for over 25 years, is really good at this whole radio host gig. He’s also clearly passionate about it and has a good time doing every show. He has a full time show producer (thanks James!), a big time studio and a nationally syndicated show playing every week.

Despite knowing me like he does, Michael invited me in recently to talk about all things social and media on a show called “Social Media for Your Business.” It was an honor to be on his show with content marketing rock stars Barbi Reuter who is Principal/Chief Operating Officer at Cushman & Wakefield | PICOR and Sarah Malcolm who is Director of Digital Strategy at ICSC. All of us had a robust conversation and I certainly see that there are different ways to approach the whole social media thing.

What I Learned from Michael

Michael, who has a shop in Atlanta called Bull Realty has taken content marketing to a jaw dropping new level. He spent years building up the show, which is now at a level where tens of thousands of people hear from him every week. Make no mistake about it; he is a trusted source of information.

Michael and I discussed his marketing philosophy briefly on the set before recording began. He does no promotion for himself or his own shop on the show (though they are an advertiser just like many others). He simply gives away very valuable ideas and corrals now very willing participants to join his show. It’s a virtuous circle of information, guest and listeners orchestrated by the maestro himself, Michael.

All this requires a big commitment from Mr. Bull. Dollars: check. Time: check. Passion, of course. You have to be very committed to a project like this. One also has to be smart about leveraging his time. Michael still runs a prospering brokerage firm in Atlanta, does deals and raises a family. It clearly makes for a busy week every week.

ROI?

People ask me all the time about ROI on the “social media thing.” “Do you get anything out of it?” they will ask with curiosity boarding on a slow drive past a traffic accident.

I do indeed. As Michael himself pointed out, my Tweeting habits got me an invitation to be on his national radio show. Not bad for a free marketing medium.

However, Michael is the far bigger winner and deservedly so. He bet big and now walks every week into his bully pulpit as a nationally recognized and respected radio host. Here’s the funny thing – and what I think is Michael’s huge ROI: by not promoting himself directly, he has become recognized as a true CRE expert. If I were in the market for someone in his area of service, his competitors wouldn’t stand a chance. Bull Realty has a leader who is disciplined, smart, and industry leading. I know this because of his show.

Laszlo Bock who sit’s atop Googles human resources machine says in his NYTimes bestseller Work Rules that we should “default to open” and be transparent and giving in our work life.

Michael, by defaulting to open, you are clearly winning not only in social media, but also in life. I Googled it and Laszlo agreed.

June 15, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Social Media For Your Business
I was honored to be part of Michael Bull’s radio show this past week which currently broadcast in 44 markets across the US. I was joined by Sarah Malcolm who is Director, Digital Strategy for ICSC and Barbi Reuter who is Principal/Chief Operating Officer
Cushman & Wakefield | PICOR. Michael asked us about the proper platforms for business, successful campaign strategies, time management tips, how to measure results and general tools for success. It was a lot of fun to participate and I had a great time joining Michael in his new high-tech studio. He’s the only person I know with a full studio in his office! www.commercialrealestateshow.com

Stop Designing for MillennialsWhen research comes out showing that Millennials behave differently than the rest of the population, it’s no surprise that everyone’s ears perk up. Gallup, for example, recently published survey results that showed 44% of U.S. Millennials believe firms will keep their personal data private all or most of the time, compared to 32% each of Gen X and Baby Boomers. Does this mean, then, that Millennials are willing to share more of their personal data and digital exhaust in exchange for your services? And should you design your products and services with this information in mind?

While this line of thinking is seductive, we think it is misguided. Millennials, like all generational cohorts, have as much that divides as unites. Treating them as a homogenous entity is likely to fail—or worse—backfire. www.hbr.com

JPMORGAN CHASE Ends Company VoicemailAccording to the Associated Press, the largest bank in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase, has ended voicemail services for about half of its 136,000 consumer bank employees.

“We realized that hardly anyone uses voicemail anymore, because we are carrying something in our pockets that get texts, e-mail or a phone call to you,” said consumer and community banking division chief Gordon Smith. www.fastcompany.com

Great Public Speakers Are Made, Not Born
One of the most persistent myths I’ve tried to debunk in my career as a communication expert is the notion that inspiring leaders who are great in front of an audience are naturally gifted speakers. It’s quite the opposite. To my knowledge nobody’s been born holding a PowerPoint clicker in their hand. Leaders who are “gifted” in the art of delivering presentations worked at it really, really hard over many, many years. Most of us see the end result but we don’t see what it took to get there. This is true of business leaders as well as many leaders on the world stage. www.Forbes.com

June 9, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Your Ending Your Emails WrongIt’s time to stop using “best.” The most succinct of e-mail signoffs, it seems harmless enough, appropriate for anyone with whom you might communicate. Best is safe, inoffensive. It’s also become completely and unnecessarily ubiquitous. www.bloomberg.com

How to Use Your LinkedIn Profile to Power A Career Transition
Are you raring to change careers? Break into a whole new line of work that makes you leap out of bed, happy to go to work every day? Parlay personal passions into professional endeavors? Or focus on a different clientele, type of product, or service?

We all know the power of LinkedIn for job hunting and networking. But how do we use it to help change careers—to make sure we’re found by the right recruiters, hiring managers, colleagues—not ones from our past, but from our future careers? www.hbr.com

“Posting to LinkedIn at least once a week is key,” Siegal told The Huffington Post. “One way recruiters gauge someone’s level of interest in a field and knowledge of industry trends is through frequency of relevant activity on LinkedIn.” www.huffingtonpost.com

American Pharoah came out of the far turn and set his shoulders as jockey Victor Espinoza focused on the finish line. Redoubling his efforts the steed ran the stretch of his life. It was a thing of breathtaking beauty. I love watching victory and seeing this stunning win at Belmont for the Triple Crown made me fist pump.

The New York Times help put the Triple Crown’s significance in perspective: “There had been only 11 of them in history, and America had elected five presidents, fought three wars and lived through at least three economic downturns since Affirmed had last completed the feat in 1978.”

Game over – head out for a well-deserved victory romp and maybe more than a little Bourbon Smash for the owners.

Saddle My Trusty Steed

Our friends in the landlord community have had a tough go of it until recently. They endured years of tough markets, lost buildings, sleepless nights and unbearable stress as they cantered through one of the worst real estate markets any of us (I hope) will ever experience. They even lost their appetite for oats – who could eat at a time like that?

But boys and girls, I think we all know this down market has changed and will continue to develop before our very eyes. Landlords have big smiles and are waving to all spectators at the track as they take their victory lap.

I can see them all puffing their chests out a little more in meetings of late. They seem to have gotten their appetites back too – for deals and for rate inflation.

The Need for Speed

Clearly tenants are going to have to giddy up and go as they make their space decisions. I am working on business in some of the more robust markets in the United States and can report that space inventory is moving very quickly. Property surveys are really “good” for about a week and then have to be refreshed in parts of Manhattan, San Francisco, Austin and other similarly hot markets.

What got everyone so frothy all of a sudden? Here are some of the contributing factors as I see them.

Robust hiring and resulting increased tenant demand

Relatively limited construction of new product, in part because of stricter lending requirements

A “hungry” residential developer market can pay more for prime sites than office developers.

Lack of available existing quality space sought after by tenants who are attempting to attract and retain high value employees

Demolition of older buildings and or reformat of product for retail and residential uses

The report: “Although we expect the occupier trend towards efficiency to continue…job growth will be strong enough to cause a 130 basis point decrease in vacancy in 2015 followed by a further 80 basis point drop in 2016.”

It goes on to say that absorption of vacant office space in the next three years is projected to exceed 175 million square feet, which is more than the past 8 years combined.

Holy oat munching, man! It seems that the user community is about to be in its own race and the winner does take all.

Get Your Head in the Game

In the bad times of the 2009, end users could ask senior executives who asked the Board who asked perhaps a higher power still if they could do deals. In times like this, we need American Pharoah-like intensity to win.

We are advising clients to create a decision box – parameters in which they will move ahead with deals. Have the board meetings in advance. It’s ok to make a phone call or send a text message, but we can’t wait and win in this market.

As a future victor of the CRE race, you will enjoy the spoils: Beautiful space in amenity rich buildings with landlords who provide a very high level of service.

But hope is not a strategy, so strap on your helmet and get in the race!

My two brothers and I had a game of “army” going in the house I grew up in. In order to keep myself safe in battle, I had to have a place to disappear to. Can’t be too ready for these things, you know.

How do we have so many TOYS? Can’t they find a HOME? Wait till your father…

My poor Mother was in constant pick-up mode. She would walk into the room and slowly shake her head from side to side at the debris generated by her progeny.

I’d get that look from her and she’d say, “You know this is why we can’t have nice things, don’t you?”

As a 9-year-old kid I thought our house was plenty nice. What else did we need?

Density with Dignity

As we keep piling more and more people into less and less space, I sometimes can picture Mom’s look. Corporate America is way past density per square foot and now is onto “utilization” measures.

Put another way, we don’t focus as much on how many people are assigned to a space; now we are trying to increase the time every chair is used during the workday. More butts in the same chairs.

I walk through many highly dense office spaces as part of my profession. I can see what I call the “Delta Crown Room” effect starting to develop. When everyone had their own piece of real estate in which to sit and post the coveted employee of the month award, we’d all make sure things were neat and tidy.

Today the free-range (fancy description is unassigned) workplace is developing into a common area like one of those airline clubs you and I both wait in for the next chariot of the sky. If your chair is broken do you go up and tell the nice uniformed employees? Nope, me neither. You just slide to the next one.

In fact, if there is any problem short of a structure fire, you likely just harrumph and move over a bit. After all, it isn’t your space and it’s certainly not your problem. A corporate airline employee will surely fix it. Thanks Mom.

Oh my… the people

In the new paradigm we have many people sitting in less and less space. I joke with my real estate colleagues that we should simply string hammocks with cell phones and see how many people we can fit per cubic foot. Let’s give them all headsets and they can sell from the recline of a hammock.

But there is a natural limit to the densification and some unnatural consequences. A few considerations:

Cleaning has to be done thoroughly and deeply every night in unassigned workspaces. Otherwise, people will get each other sick while rotating desks.

HVAC (air-conditioning) systems strain to keep everyone cool with heat loads that are way above design

Elevators get overused and have accelerated replacement schedules

Bathrooms, well you get the idea

Parking can become untenable

Companies across America may be unknowingly violating fire codes in dense situations

Privacy can be a huge issue, which I’ve previously written about here

What’s the point?

Office space is the envelope in which we conduct business, but it also defines our culture. How do we have both effects – a highly dense workspace that stays nice and keeps you smiling?

One thing to keep in mind is what the people in the office are actually doing. In my experience, people who are involved in productive activities such as call center work can function well in highly dense space. Those involved in creative and highly collaborative work like to have different types of spaces for private as opposed to collaborative work.

At the end of the day, I urge my clients to think carefully about how they will use the space well before we pick the buildings to tour. Keep expectations in line down the road too. We can’t suddenly turn the accounting office in Des Moines into a call center – not at the densities that most would like to achieve.

In short a mismatch can be catastrophic and cause many management headaches, which can lead to an absence of nice things on a whole new level.

Plus you may not have anyplace to hide. And I can tell you first hand that’s a bad idea.

June 1, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

5 Ways to Perfect Your LinkedIn Profile
If you’re tasked with generating new business for your company — and if you’re an entrepreneur, you definitely are — stop thinking about your LinkedIn profile as a resume and start thinking about it as a marketing tool.

Why? Prospects or customers doing research find you through a search engine or on LinkedIn. That’s why you shouldn’t risk having a profile that simply highlights your wins and leaves out the context necessary to paint the full picture of who you are. www.inc.com

How Top CEO’s EmailWhen you receive almost 150 work emails every day, your inbox can quickly become the bain of your existence. That suffering increases exponentially when you’re the leader of a company. So how do top CEOs like Bill Gates and Tim Cook manage their overwhelming inbox flux? www.businessinsider.com

How to Write The Perfect Tweet
80% of B2B companies are using Twitter, reports Brafton research. Are these companies tweeting in a way to increase awareness, engage customers and move buyers toward conversion? You need to be able to talk the talk of the customer to sell or to market to them effectively. www.linkedin.org

Twitter Overtakes LinkedIn As Number 1 Social Media Site For SalespeopleLinkedIn, with its 364 million users and Twitter with its 302 million active users both are in a race to get more engaged users, albeit for different reasons. Yet, most (myself included) presumed LinkedIn to be the go to platform for salespeople. But according to the sales survey and research we conducted with a client, Twitter ranked slightly more valuable than LinkedIn when it came to sales prospecting. www.forbes.com

Let’s be real. Social media etiquette is complicated. The era of handwritten thank you notes, hostess gifts, and opening car doors for young ladies has given way to a convolution of online social rules that blow the mind.

In fact, you might even be accidentally breaking some of those LinkedIn rules right now. There are certain practices of LinkedIn etiquette that are never spoken but only picked up on. I’m here to break the silence and tell you a few of those unwritten LinkedIn etiquette rules. www.forbes.com

To your success, Ken

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/06/01/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-34/feed/0Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles to Help You This Weekhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/05/26/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-33/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/05/26/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-33/#commentsTue, 26 May 2015 09:47:20 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4229

May 26th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

What Kind Of Business Pain Do You Solve?
You have to know what kind of Business Pain you solve, and you have to know a lot about the pain. If you were an expert in relieving a common and annoying kind of rash that affects guinea pigs, you’d become an expert in that rash and its early and advanced symptoms. You’d become very comfortable asking every guinea pig owner you meet “So, I hope you’re not experiencing that awful guinea pig rash that’s going around….”? www.forbes.com

The idea is to embed the advances in technology and data collection which are making the Internet of Things a reality into the infrastructures of the environments where we live. Already, large companies such as Cisco and IBM are working with universities and civic planning authorities to develop data-driven systems for transport, waste management, law enforcement, and energy use to make them more efficient and improve the lives of citizens. www.forbes.com

Driving Uber Mad“Do you know why no one wanted to pick you up?” he asked. “Because you have a low rating.” I was shocked. Blinded by the wondrous handiness of Uber, I had missed the fact that while I got to rate them, they got to rate me back.

Revealing that I had only 4.2 stars, my driver continued to school me. “You don’t always come out right away,” he said, sternly, adding that I would have to work hard to be more appealing if I wanted to get drivers to pick me up. Uber began to feel less like a dependable employee and more like an irritated boyfriend. www.nytimes.com

The Incredibly Simple Way to Find Your ‘Secret’ Uber Passenger RatingIf you’ve ever used the ride-sharing service Uber, then you have an Uber passenger rating. In the same way that passengers rate drivers from one to five stars (one star meaning poor service and five stars meaning you were very satisfied with the ride), every Uber customer gets assigned a score. If your passenger rating drops too low, you may find it difficult to get lifts — or even be booted off the service entirely. Passengers can’t actually see their own ratings on the app, which makes them a source of constant fascination.www.businessinsider.com

Why You Don’t Need To Be Involved in Every Social Media Channel
I get asked a lot, “How do you find time to do it all? If I participate in every social media channel, I don’t have time to do anything else!” Exactly! The reality is that I don’t do it all. You can’t be everywhere in social media—and you won’t be effective trying. But the good news is that if you narrow your focus, you can get serious traction and build your following. www.michaelhyatt.com

To your success, Ken

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/05/26/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-33/feed/0Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles to Help You This Weekhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/05/18/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-32/
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May 18th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Why People Thrive in Coworking Spaces
There seems to be something special about coworking spaces. As researchers who have, for years, studied how employees thrive, we were surprised to discover that people who belong to them report levels of thriving that approach an average of 6 on a 7-point scale. This is at least a point higher than the average for employees who do their jobs in regular offices, and something so unheard of that we had to look at the data again. www.hbr.org

9 Things You Didn’t Know About the Office CubicleNikil Saval’s book, Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, is a fascinating guide to the intellectual history of the American office. Part cultural history, part architectural analysis and part management theory — with some labor economics, gender studies and pop culture thrown in for good measure — the book is a smart look at the evolution of the place where we spend so much of our lives.

It details everything from the role the skyscraper had on the modern office to the secretarial revolt that helped inspire the film “9 to 5.” But the book’s discussion of those fabric-covered, three-walled partitions will be one of its most interesting parts to today’s workers. While many people now work remotely and many organizations have been rethinking the office cube, we still love to hate those corporate boxes. www.washingtonpost.com

“Woodman, 39, vowed in the development phase of the 10-year-old company to give Dana his college roommate 10 percent of any proceeds he received from the sale of the company’s shares, according to the company’s 2014 prospectus. To cancel this agreement, GoPro issued Dana more than 6 million fully-vested options in June 2011 and 270,000 restricted stock units six months later. Woodman agreed to reimburse the company when the options were exercised.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Woodman’s net worth fell to $2.3 billion as a result of the transaction, according to Bloomberg. www.ajc.com

What Kind Of Business Pain Do You Solve?
If I’m interviewing you I want to know what problem you solve. When you can tell me what kind of Business Pain you relieve in your work, then I know that you understand how your talents fit into the larger organization.

When you can tell me what kind of Business Pain you alleviate, then I know that you see the impact of your work on the ground. You’re not so tuned into the work on your desk that you’ve lost track of its connection to the organization you work for. www.forbes.com

The Neuroscience Behind Hot-Headed EmailsIt’s easy to lose one’s cool in the fast-paced, react-now, high-stress world of business—just look at the emails or tweets that have come back to haunt so many leaders these days. And there’s a scientific explanation for why it’s can be so easy for any of us to fire off insensitive or angry tirades.

By scanning people’s brains while they’re making decisions, scientists have discovered that, when stress or emotions are involved (as they often are in the workplace), people’s thinking patterns change. When we’re calm, the frontal lobes of our brains guide slow, rational thinking; this is called “cold cognition.” But when we’re aroused—by stress, anger, or even love—spur-of-the-moment, impulsive “hot cognition” decisions are made by the emotionally-driven limbic system and amygdala, which hijacks information before it’s ever even processed the more logical frontal lobes. www.wsj.com

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

The next time you find yourself flying into Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, take a look at the northeast corner of the airport. There you’ll find a groovy-looking building with sports cars speeding on an adjacent racetrack. What you are seeing is Porsche North America’s new $100 million headquarters and Porsche Experience Center, which opened their doors to the public this week. www.businessinsider.com

Six Ways To Confidently Say “I Don’t Know”The hardest three words to say aren’t I love you – they’re I don’t know. That’s the opinion of Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, authors of the behavioral economics bestseller Freakonomics. From my experience coaching executives, I have to say they’re on to something.www.forbes.com

Technology Trends That Matter To Sales teamsThe convergence of mobile, analytics, context-rich systems, and the cloud, together with an explosion of information, is transforming sales, and enabling buyers and salespeople to engage with each other in more effective and efficient ways. Recently, information technology research and advisory company Gartner compiled a list of top 10 strategic technology trends. At least five of these trends have significant implications for sales forces. www.hbr.com

How Facebook’s cold storage preserves your old photosFacebook has done a whole lot of work in order to keep your oldest and least popular photos neatly tucked away and ready to be served up whenever people want to look at them. Today Facebook is opening up about many of the ideas its infrastructure team has implemented in the two cold storage facilities it maintains at its data centers in Oregon and North Carolina. www.venturebeat.com

Google uses a clever trick to stop execs from leavingGoogle reportedly uses an informal bench system to keep “prized engineers and product gurus” at the company, even when they’re not actively working on a project, Business Insider revealed Thursday. The article cited anonymous sources who shed light on the company’s tactics to retain top talent. www.fortune.com

To your success! Ken

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/05/11/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-31/feed/0Think Like an Ownerhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/05/09/think-like-an-owner/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/05/09/think-like-an-owner/#commentsSat, 09 May 2015 09:00:31 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=4100Recently I visited the Golden Bear State for a combination of meetings and a little R&R up in the wonderful Sonoma area. Fun, sun and wine are a good recipe for a sanity check, I can report.

The Road to High Tech Nirvana

Some of my Buddies from The Harvey Team Dan and Tori. Wine Cats Indeed.

Thanks to my friends and wonderful hosts at The Harvey Team, I did get a chance to tour several “high tech” office spaces in and near San Francisco and saw some of the most cutting edge offices one can imagine. I’ll hand it to the good folks of Northern California, they know how to make most everything better including…work. Tech in San Francisco is more than an industry. It is indeed a way of life.

One can feel the excitement in your bones when you walk into a NoCal tech office space. It’s like that feeling when someone drives buy with an amped up bass in their car. Everyone participates in the song whether it was directed at you or not. I got a broad smile on my face just feeling the capitalism reverberating around me. Ahhh.

Baubles, Benji, More

I felt like a kid at Christmas as we went from space to space. What would I find in the next offices. The spaces had all the things you’d image from stand up desks to dogs happily prancing around. One space had a sign that said “days since Benji’s (the dog) last accident-2.” Ooops.

Benji in between accidents

Bright colors, lots of glass and daylight permeated the spaces. People sat in “benching” configurations which consists of long tables like a Delta Crown Room with people gazing intently at very large monitors. Those operating in such an open environment had “focus chops” in that they kept working even though are crowd was wandering around. Maybe the earbuds pumping Maroon 5 help block out our intrusion.

White boards were everywhere as was “soft” furniture like recliners and large bean bag chairs. One space had an area all set for the office band to play at any time. The finest food and beverage were omnipresent. At one large company (I signed an NDA so can’t tell you exactly which one, but it’s a well known name out of Mountain View) they offer not only dry cleaning but also laundry for free.

Ready for the band at Mattermark’s offices.

Yup, bring your undies in by 9 and they’ll be neatly folded by 5. The benefits also include transportation on tricked out “tour bus” like set ups with yet more food and the best wifi on the planet. They will give you a car too, if you agree to commute with 2 other people every day. If you need to Uber home to meet the repair man, no problem. The company will cover the tab. Salesforce.com has a series of vending machines in its offices with headsets of every kind, keyboards, and every imaginable tech accoutrement. Scan your badge and out drops your the latest Beats headgear.

Benching at Mattermark HQ

If you can dream a semi-legitimate need, your employer will do everything possible to make it reality in this tech mecca.

Storm Clouds

While I do believe there is a certain enlightened attitude in San Francisco tech executives, there is also self-interest at work. Companies such as Google, Apple and others are growing very, very quickly and the most sought after employees have tremendous leverage both in terms of pay and perks. What many high value employees want is money (of course), significance in the workplace, and lifestyle. They realize that they will be spending much of their waking hours at very demanding jobs, so why not enjoy wheat grass drinks and a little hot yoga during breaks. Plus fresh organic fruit smoothies really boost afternoon productivity.

Put another way, employers in the Bay Area are caught in a war of workspace that is escalating quickly. I know you’ve read articles about over the top workplaces in the past, but look out, because attraction and retention of employees is THE issue. This will be fascinating to watch and learn from.

Think Like You Are an Owner Because You Are

One of my great take aways is a seemingly simple concept that we’ve talked about in Corporate America for years: Think Like an Owner. The unidentified large tech company that I toured has this as a mantra. If you want to travel somewhere for your job and stay at a W Hotel because your body needs the rest – go ahead. No one needs to sign off and no one approves – you are empowered to spend the company’s dollars in the way you see fit.

This was refreshing and reports from inside the company indicate that if you treat people like adults, they are very likely to in fact act that way. I’m sure there are exceptions and poor choices made, but the big anonymous company is willing to deal with the exceptions and not make so many rules for everyone else. People talked about this concept internally with great pride. I’ve read a million HBR articles on this concept, but rarely have seen it work in real life.

I feel like I spotted Nessie.

I acknowledge that this thinking works when one has stock options and even administrative staff cash out big when IPO’s happen. But it’s still a good reminder that over management by finance and procurement staffs can drive us back to high school type behavior. I sure hope the idea of fewer rules and higher assumed trust spreads from NoCal.

Back in the real world, I’m not sure we’ll be giving too many rock concerts in our office spaces, and you’ll have to wash you own skivvies, but maybe your office will upgrade the quality of the coffee. And hey, at least you won’t have to clean up after Benji.

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/05/09/think-like-an-owner/feed/0Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles to Help You This Weekhttp://commercialtenantresource.com/2015/05/04/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-30/
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May 4, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

The Science Of Why You Should Spend Your Money On Experiences, Not ThingsMost people are in the pursuit of happiness. There are economists who think happiness is the best indicator of the health of a society. We know that money can make you happier, though after your basic needs are met, it doesn’t make you that much happier. But one of the biggest questions is how to allocate our money, which is (for most of us) a limited resource. There’s a very logical assumption that most people make when spending their money: that because a physical object will last longer, it will make us happier for a longer time than a one-off experience like a concert or vacation. According to recent research, it turns out that assumption is completely wrong. www.fastcoexist.com

3 Steps to Break Out in a Tired Industry
When you are in an industry where the firms are more homogeneous than the customers, it should be possible to define a subgroup whose needs are alike, which may well cut across traditional demographics. Focusing on that particular group often enables a new way to compete because the firms that try to be everything to everyone will inevitably be imperfect in their offering. www.hbr.com

Making Distance DisappearAsk anyone on a distributed team and they’ll tell you it’s tough work. Even for teams collaborating in the same place, the bar is set higher than ever: The basic expectation is to be faster, smarter and more innovative. This is hard enough to do when you’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder alongside teammates with whom you’ve built some social capital: people you can see, hear and understand, working with content that’s within reach. Now try it with people who are working remotely—some of whom you’ve never met in person, some you can’t quite understand and some who are working late at night while you are in the office early and your body still wants to be in bed. www.steelecase.com

The Least Important Part of a Digital Presence
Thanks Allen Buchanan for the shout out! | CONTENT abounds. The News Funnel curates content from ALL of us who write weekly (some of us weekly). But, The News Funnel also compiles content from myriad commercial real estate news sources from around the globe. Do you doubt for a moment that The News Funnel’s digital presence is dominant? Ok, how about this one? Ken Ashley, with whom I’ve not had the pleasure, through his Commercial Tenant Resource Blog publishes the “Five Most Interesting Articles This Week”. Ken is DOMINANT.. www.thenewsfunnel.com

April 27th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

US Consumer Spending Expected to ReboundThe consumer is the most important contributor to the U.S. economy, accounting for approximately 68% of GDP. However, in the first quarter of 2015 severe winter weather caused consumer spending to slow. But we are feeling much better now – thanks for asking. High confidence, rising incomes and low oil prices are expected to lead to stronger consumer spending in the second quarter and beyond. www.cushwake.com

Honestly, it’s puzzling that an inanimate, imaginary thing such as a brand should seem to have gender.
But obviously brands do send out gender signals, and sometimes they’re quite strong. In fact, recent research shows that the more intense the gender signals, the greater the brand value — so not only do we readily perceive gender in brands, we like to perceive gender in brands. www.hbr.com

18 Reasons Why You Need Every Employee Using LinkedIn Every DayCorporations are finally waking up to the fact that they need to engage all their people in social media. The impact of social media on a company’s brand is monumental, and it affects everyone throughout your organization – from the entry-level millennials you just hired to your CEO.

Senior management often balks at the need to be social savvy, but according to a study by BrandFog, “CEOs are better leaders who can strengthen brands, build trust in products and services, demonstrate brand values, and communicate accountability – all by simply being on a social network.” www.forbes.com

5 Steps to a Better Social Media Strategy
I follow these five simple steps at the beginning of any marketing campaign I create. Whether I’m working on a TV premiere or a B2B business development pipeline acceleration project, these five steps remain the same because they work. Once you start following this process, you will no longer be shooting in the dark; you will be moving forward purposefully with a foundation of clear thinking and data-driven content that will help you achieve your goals. www.linkedin.org

Our new, modern office was beautifully airy, and yet remarkably oppressive. Nothing was private. On the first day, I took my seat at the table assigned to our creative department, next to a nice woman who I suspect was an air horn in a former life. www.theage.com

April 20, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Marc Benioff: How to Create Alignment Within Your Company in Order to Succeed
Marc, who is leading one of the fastest growing tech companies in history, has developed his own management process, V2MOM. It’s an acronym that stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measures. This tool (pronounced “V2 mom”) has helped achieve goals in past work and helps make salesforce.com a success. Although there are many leadership paradigms and frameworks available to follow, V2MOM offers a new simplicity. It is easy to digest, unlike other programs that take longer to understand than they do to implement. www.salesforce.com

7 Benefits Of Using Public Speaking To Build Your Brand Authority
Of course you are not alone if the words “public speaking” make you cringe or set you to shaking in your boots, only slightly less nervous than awaiting the results of STD testing. According to Forbes contributor Nick Morgan, 80% of people have a fear of public speaking; therefore, it may not only be an overlooked tactic but an underrepresented one as well. In fact, many businesses already enjoy success from this principle. www.forbes.com

10 Tactics for Launching a Product Using Social MediaThe new launch landscape levels the playing field for brands of all sizes and industries when reaching consumers–yet the ability for consumers to share their opinions freely on social media can provide huge hurdles for brand messaging. Consumers can quickly activate other like-minded consumers to rev up the online discussion to a level anywhere from highly positive to tanking a brand. www.hbr.com

For Silicon Valley engineers, the bar is higher than ever
Demand for talented software engineers is as high as ever, with companies throwing huge salaries and perks at new employees gravitating toward consumer-focused businesses ranging from leviathans such as Google (GOOG) to buzzier, smaller outfits like Snapchat. But rising expectations from some employers also mean expectations are reaching stratospheric levels. www.Fortune.com

April 13, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

13 Urban Trends to Watch
The contours of an urban renaissance—long in the making—are quickly coming into focus. Massive societal and economic changes are converging to create a new urban reality, a transformation of importance to the millions of Americans in the nation’s metropolitan areas. Demographic changes are creating markets for mixed-use and mixed-income models of urban design. Job growth in advanced industries fits the preferences of knowledge workers attracted to urban neighborhoods. The “smart” institutions of the new economy, such as research universities and medical centers, are becoming the knowledge anchors of cities, spinning off employment, contracts, businesses, residences, and public amenities. www.urbanland.uli.org

How To Leave Work At 5 P.M. And Still Get Everything Done
It’s a pattern with which most full-time professionals are familiar–you’re spending increasing amounts of time at your desk, but it feels like you’re getting less done. The hours stretch on, the to-do list grows, and you find yourself facing a future where you might let go of your apartment and just start keeping a toothbrush and slippers in your desk. Otherwise you’ll never get it all done—right? www.forbes.com

Commercial Property Values Now 14% Above 2007 Peak
U.S. commercial property values have been nothing if not consistent in the past half decade, steadily ticking upward. Real estate research firm Green Street Advisors reported Tuesday that commercial property values in March were 11% above March 2014, and unchanged from February. In all, values have now risen 87% since they bottomed out in 2009, and more than 14% from the prior peak in 2007, according to Green Street’s index. www.wsj.com

The Impending Opportunity In Real Estate Technology
Things are starting to simmer in real estate technology. The first phase of technology development in the category, which was primarily focused around listing services for the residential side of the market, has paved the way for industry leaders to broadly reconsider how technology can make their lives better. www.techcrunch.com

9 Tips for Faster Wi-Fi StreamingThe cable plan you signed up for promised up to 300Mbps of blistering Internet speed, but reality has proven to be somewhat different. You’re barely topping 25Mbps, Netflix doesn’t work upstairs and by 7 p.m., no one seems to be able to stream anything at all. It’s quite possible to boost your Wi-Fi speed yourself, although the solution could be as simple as moving your router or as persnickety as switching Wi-Fi frequencies. www.time.com

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Office Markets in Tech-Heavy Cities Lead 2015 Pack “It’s not the best market I’ve ever seen, but it’s certainly on its way,” said Ryan Severino, an economist at Reis. “All of the signs are really pointing to a better future.” As has been true for the past few years, the top-performing markets tended to be those where tech companies are fast-expanding. The San Jose, Calif., area, which includes Silicon Valley, saw rents sought by landlords jump 7.2% over the previous year to $28.03 a square foot, the fastest rent growth in the country. There, mature technology companies have been adding employees at a rapid clip. Facebook Inc., for instance, is in the process of opening a giant Frank Gehry-designed expansion at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., complete with a sprawling roof garden. www.wsj.com

The 100 Best Leadership Quotes of All TimeLife is about discovering who we are; leading is about striving to become better than we are, and helping everything and everyone around us to become better too. Let these words inspire you, motivate you, encourage you and empower you to be the best you can be. www.inc.com

How This Couple Retired In Their 30s To Travel The World
Jeremy sold his house, began renting close to work and biking to the office. With his costs slashed, he was able to save. At a conference in Beijing, he met his future wife, Winnie, who is from Taiwan and had been saving 50% of her salary in order to travel. Now, Jeremy, 40, and Winnie, 36, are financially independent, travel the world and blog about their envious lifestyle on GoCurryCracker.com. (The site is named for their rallying cry derived from their favorite snack on their honeymoon hiking Mt. Rainier in Washington, during which they endured bone-soaking rain and encountered mosquitoes as big as bats.). www.forbes.com

March 30, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How To Ace Your Performance Review
Paul Falcone, a human resources executive in Los Angeles and author of 2600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews and The Performance Appraisal Tool Kit, has concrete advice to offer. First, Falcone says, you must take the initiative. Do your own self-examination in advance, he suggests. Some companies ask their employees to fill out self-review forms. If yours doesn’t, put yourself through the paces anyway. “Otherwise it’s like being a turkey on Thanksgiving,” Falcone says. “You put your head down on the block and wait for your boss to lower the ax.” www.forbes.com

Looking for Your Dream Office Space? Don’t Go It Alone.Those with experience in leasing and purchasing commercial office space know that finding and securing a dream office is a lot easier said than done. Some business owners who have learned costly lessons in finding their first office opt to hire a tenant or buyer’s broker to help them with moving to their next space. Savvy decision-makers know that brokers’ fees are included in the overall rent or purchase price (and that the landlord, not the tenant, pays them) so there is no “added expense” in the transaction. In fact, a good broker can save clients thousands of dollars, countless hours and immeasurable risk. www.entrepreneur.com

Retooling How Law Firms WorkAs work becomes more collaborative and firms recognize the importance of presenting a cohesive and dynamic brand to clients and potential clients, the behemoths of the legal industry have taken it upon themselves to hire design firms from large markets to retool their workspaces.

The attention paid to such renovations is certainly justified, but the conversation is not limited to law firms with a national footprint. Regional firms, many of which domicile themselves in suburban office parks, are also recognizing the importance of transforming their workspaces into business drivers and brand emblems. Of course these firms don’t always have as much capital to budget towards renovations, and they can’t rely on a national headquarters to foot the bill. They have to be a bit choosy about what to undertake as well as what design firm to hire. This doesn’t, however, mean they have to sacrifice quality or scale back workplace ambitions. By relying on design firms more closely attuned to their particular needs they can remake their offices in cost efficient manners that deliver measurable business results. www.gensler.com

Schlender and Tetzeli’s account is personal and deep — Jobs trusted Schlender, who worked for Fortune and The Wall Street Journal covering him and Apple for 25 years. www.businessinsider.com

Google Wins Bragging Rights in ‘PowerPoint Karaoke’ TournamentChet Haase, a 49-year-old Google software developer, won a heated face off Thursday night at the first-ever technology industry Speechless tournament. The forum for “PowerPoint karaoke,” a mix of improvised comedy and a takedown of dull corporate presentations, was a subject of a Wall Street Journal story this week about people turning the painful ritual of corporate presentations into fodder for fun.

In the comedy format, participants must give an impromptu speech, typically on a silly topic–a sermon about singer Kanye West, for example, or a presentation about robot vending machines–to accompany slides the presenter hasn’t seen before. www.wsj.com

March 23, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

When Wine Is Not Enough: 25 Gifts Under $25 That Say ‘Thank You’ To Your Hosts
Nearly 30 years after becoming an official grown-up, I face a slight panic that I won’t bring the right thing. That my gift will be boring—especially if it’s wine and my hosts outrank me on the oenophile scale. That they will throw it out or re-gift it the second I am gone. Which is kind of ridiculous, of course, because I know that when someone comes to visit me, I don’t mind at all if they didn’t bring anything, just that they’ve taken the time to show up at my door is enough. Anything they do bring is just charming and delightful and beyond my expectation, no matter what it is. www.forbes.com

Looking for Your Dream Office Space? Don’t Go It Alone.Those with experience in leasing and purchasing commercial office space know that finding and securing a dream office is a lot easier said than done. Some business owners who have learned costly lessons in finding their first office opt to hire a tenant or buyer’s broker to help them with moving to their next space. Savvy decision-makers know that brokers’ fees are included in the overall rent or purchase price (and that the landlord, not the tenant, pays them) so there is no “added expense” in the transaction. In fact, a good broker can save clients thousands of dollars, countless hours and immeasurable risk. www.entrepreneur.com

Steve Jobs’s management style has been described in many ways, both positive and negative. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying what he accomplished: Within a short time, he built the most successful company on the planet.

The video in this link shows excerpts of a company retreat that Jobs orchestrated during the first three months of the company. And it’s fascinating. www.inc.com

Continued CRE Price Growth Kicks Off 2015Commercial property values began the New Year in much the same way as 2014 ended, with prices continuing to climb in January across all property types and most markets, according to the latest CoStar Commercial Repeat Sale Indices (CCRSI). www.costar.com

March 16th, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How to Deal With an Inbox PileupVacations are great. Returning from them, not so much. While you get to show off your tan and tackle your to-do list with renewed vigor, coming home after getting away also means facing one of the most dreaded realities of the contemporary work environment–your massively overstuffed email inbox. While you’ve been away sipping cocktails or hitting the slopes, your correspondence (and daily quotient of junk mail) has been piling up. Now you face the truly horrifying task of sorting through all the unopened messages.

Or do you? VC Brad Feld thinks he’s found a better way, but be warned, it’s not for the faint of heart. www.inc.com

The Latest Round Of LinkedIn Changes: What You Need To Know
LinkedIn recently introduced a new look and feel to your home page and profile page, as well as additional features and a new pricing plan. The latter was designed to get more people to pay more – or pay at all (since most members are on the “free plan”). This is not surprising. LinkedIn is an ever-evolving platform with new features being added seemingly every month. Most of the changes enhance what you can do and how you can use LinkedIn’s tools. Even the most fervent users of LinkedIn have a hard time keeping up with the enhancements and modifications. www.forbes.com

Mark Zuckerberg: I Would Only Hire Someone to Work For Me If I Would Work For Them
When it comes to onboarding new employees with whom he’ll work directly, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bears in mind a single guiding principle that he says has never steered him wrong. “I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person,” Zuckerberg told an audience gathered in Barcelona yesterday. While employers generally have more work to do than staffers to get it done, Zuckerberg says business owners should resist the urge to settle for lesser candidates in the name of manpower. “Over the long term,” he said, “you’re only going to be better if you get someone really good.” www.entrepreneur.com

March 9, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

It’s back! The cubicle is making a big comeback
“About 30 percent of the workforce is still made up of introverts,” said Mason Awtry knows who’s president of Chicago’s Rightsize Facility Performance. “These workers need their own territory. Management might want a collaborative environment. But there are a lot of jobs that don’t require collaboration. Everything from accounting and technical jobs to customer service people who serve external clients, these jobs often don’t require collaboration.” Those companies that are moving back to cubicles, though, aren’t always returning to the cubicle of old, the one surrounded by 8-by-8 10-foot panels. Today’s modern cubicle walls usually stand up to 54 inches tall. And modern cubicles usually feature some sort of glass element. www.rejournals.com

When Your Punctuation Says It All (!)
I’m a writer; it’s natural I’d have a thing for grammar. But these days, it’s as if our punctuation is on steroids. It’s not just that each of us is more delicately choosing our characters, knowing that an exclamation point or a colon carries more weight in our 140-character world. Or even that our punctuation suddenly feels like hyperbole (right?!?!?!?!?!) because we’ve lost all audible tone. www.nytimes.com

Little Bird: A game changer for tracking influencers If you know how social media marketing works, then you know that social has changed the rules of marketing. It’s no longer about targeting a desired demographic and then bombarding that audience with one-way commercial messages. Madison Avenue and Don Draper live on in the form of mass marketing, but social marketing has transformed how we share commercial messages. www.socialmedia.biz

Photos: Google Lifts Curtain on New Headquarters
Google unveiled an audacious plan to redevelop its headquarters campus on Friday, proposing to convert a hodge-podge of non-descript office buildings into an enclave of signature tent-shaped glass-and-metal structures. The plans, created by London design firm Heatherwick Studio and Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, would add about 2.5 million square feet to Google’s existing four-million-square-foot campus in Mountain View, Calif. The additional space would accommodate an additional 10,000 employees, on top of the 20,000 who work at the headquarters complex now. www.wsj.com

March 2nd, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How to Write The Perfect Tweet
80% of B2B companies are using Twitter, reports Brafton research. Are these companies tweeting in a way to increase awareness, engage customers and move buyers toward conversion? You need to be able to talk the talk of the customer to sell or to market to them effectively. www.linkedin.org

4 Ways to Pick the Best City for Your Startup
You have decided you’re going to start your business–but it’s so small, it could start anywhere. After all, it only needs 3 square feet in your spare bedroom. Does the location of your startup really matter? For services businesses such as florists, home services companies, and the like, it may not matter so much. But for tech and product companies, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” www.Inc.com

The Millennial generation, that is. I certainly acknowledge that there is a large group of young workers busily working their way up the corporate ladder. This year, Millennials (born circa 1980-2000, also known as Gen-Y) are projected to surpass the outsized Baby Boom generation as the nation’s largest living generation, according to the population projections released by the U.S. Census Bureau in December of 2014.

This group which is now between ages 18 to 34 numbers 75.3 million, surpassing the 74.9 million Boomers (ages 51 to 69). Maybe you should go long on Red Bull.

There have been entire libraries worth of articles, books and panels convened to cover the needs wants and yearnings of this generation. All the architects, and workplace prognosticators are talking about how to design office space that will keep this generation happily productive and engaged. I’m sure it’s good for business, because a lot of middle aged executives are trying to figure out how to create just the right environment for today’s cherub faced, energetic and frenetic team members.

Cookie Cutter

How you doin’ there doughboy? (Credit iStock)

But are they really all the same?

While each generation has common characteristics that give it a specific character, I began to wonder about the many well-meaning experts waiving the M word around like a sword at industry meetings and in every article remotely having to do with real estate (here’s an example).

“Millenials want ‘we space instead of me space.’ Millenials feel the need to collaborate. Milennials don’t want to be told, but instead consulted. Millennials require lots of recognition.” All of a sudden we are surrounded by experts on catering to the inner desires of this group. Heck, even the White House is getting in on the action of telling us what this newest addition to America’s workforce needs. Thank you, sir.

Are we homogenizing an entire generation into one meme? Is it really possible that we can generalize the needs and wants of 75 million people so easily?

After all, we are lumping into the cookie dough different races, regions and religions not to mention gender differences. I bet not every Millenial likes Taylor Swift or uses Snapchat.

The other issue is the relative youth of this generific group. Before our very eyes, they are growing up, getting married, having kids and <gulp> becoming adults. Remember your youth? I bet you never thought you’d be like your parents – absolutely no way, you rebel you.

The Kids are Alright but Not All Just Alike

Here’s an idea: why don’t we design and operate office space based on the company and its desired culture. Remember what your mom told you about being all things to all people?

I had lunch with uber successful CRE tech entrepreneur Patrick Braswell this week and we discussed this very topic. Patrick, who has an unusual perspective of having both been a tenant rep broker and a tech CEO agreed that focusing first on your own company’s version of successful culture is the starting point. “Some Millenials are introverts and some are extroverts, for example” he said. “You can’t take one formula to this cake bake.”

The days of designing office space to save money are largely over. While office landlords are really cashing in on the upswing in the economy, the largest single cost on most income statements is talent. Attracting and retaining your key employees is now critical. The wolf is at the door; believe me, your competitors would love to swipe as many of your gifted team as they can.

Um, Maybe You Just Ask?

I do think that there are some very intriguing and creative design strategies coming out of this focus on America’s largest generation. I am happy to see work and workplaces become fun again after the mean and scary years of 2008-2011. By show of hands, can we all agree?

I’d just implore you to use a little common sense when the office experts show up with fancy charts and pictures about the new “in” thing. Take your emerging leaders to lunch and simply ask them what is on their minds. Involve them in the process of design as you move forward with new office space. You still make the decision, but involving the very people you are trying to energize carries some risk and likely outsized rewards.

Most of all, select smart designs that are true to your company and its desired culture. Design with integrity that is true to your leadership vision and the uniqueness of your business environment will be the true winner.

And that will make everyone happy, including your mom. By the way, I don’t think you are anything like your parents either.

February 23, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Let’s Kill Performance Reviews In 2015
The boring, linear, gray, data-driven and analytical part of business puts me to sleep. We need some analysis, of course. We need to know how much we sold during the month and what we spent on raw materials and payroll. We need to measure some things, but we go overboard. We take measurement and analysis to an extreme. We take it far beyond what we need to run the business. www.forbes.com

The Shape of Things to Come
In recent months, Sir Jonathan Ive, the forty-seven-year-old senior vice-president of design at Apple—who used to play rugby in secondary school, and still has a bench-pressing bulk that he carries a little sheepishly, as if it belonged to someone else—has described himself as both “deeply, deeply tired” and “always anxious.” When he sits down, on an aluminum stool in Apple’s design studio, or in the cream leather back seat of his Bentley Mulsanne, a car for a head of state, he is likely to emit a soft, half-ironic groan. His manner suggests the burden of being fully appreciated. www.newyorker.com

Got a Wicked Problem? First Tell Me How You Make Toast
Making toast doesn’t sound very complicated — until someone asks you to draw the process, step by step. Tom Wujec loves asking people and teams to draw how they make toast, because the process reveals unexpected truths about how we can solve our biggest, most complicated problems at work. Learn how to run this exercise yourself, and hear Wujec’s surprising insights from watching thousands of people draw toast. www.ted.com

5 Tools for Downloading and Analyzing Twitter Data
If you are running a social campaign, you have to be analyzing your account’s data. To do that, you have to do some data mining. Unfortunately, it is a time consuming process that brands often hire whole teams to manage, rather than entrusting it to a single person. The good news is that there are tools that make it infinitely easier, and that you can take advantage of to archive your own Twitter data. www.entrpreneur.com

Twitter’s CEO: How I Stay Focused Under Fire
A typical week for Costolo involves 12 to 15 standing meetings, so he has a few rules for efficiency’s sake. First, no canceling. Freeing up that time may be tempting, but it’s how small problems become big ones. “I’m the connective tissue between all these groups,” he says. “It’s important for me to have context for the issues and challenges everyone’s dealing with.” www.inc.com

Febuary 16, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life
Be careful out there folks: “As she made the long journey from New York to South Africa, to visit family during the holidays in 2013, Justine Sacco, 30 years old and the senior director of corporate communications at IAC, began tweeting acerbic little jokes about the indignities of travel…” www.nytimes.com

How to Write The Perfect Tweet
80% of B2B companies are using Twitter, reports Brafton research. Are these companies tweeting in a way to increase awareness, engage customers and move buyers toward conversion? You need to be able to talk the talk of the customer to sell or to market to them effectively. www.linkedin.org

The Impending Opportunity In Real Estate TechnologyThings are starting to simmer in real estate technology. The first phase of technology development in the category, which was primarily focused around listing services for the residential side of the market, has paved the way for industry leaders to broadly reconsider how technology can make their lives better. www.techcrunch.com

Don’t Waste Those 30-Minute Gaps Between Meetings
We all have 30-minute gaps in our work schedules that we neither planned nor agreed to. We can blame the automated scheduling platforms that companies implemented in the 1990s and 2000s for that. These systems — most notably Microsoft Office — have had unintended consequences on our time: meetings are often scheduled far into the future, more people attend, and — possibly the most frustrating consequence of all — 30-minute gaps are scattered throughout our day. The systems that were developed to improve our efficiency are, in fact, killing our productivity. We have literally handed over control of what is on our daily calendar, who we meet with Monday morning, in what order or cadence we go about our work day. It is time to take back control — at least where we can. www.hbr.com

I have long maintained that office space design is like hemlines – always changing to the latest and greatest fashion thing. But the reality is we have seen it all before.

Of late, corporate America has proudly crammed its workers into a highly dense environment, claiming that, as a result, the employee will experience the holy grail of office existence: collaboration.

It seems so glorious to be able to instantly know what everyone is working on and to seamlessly share information while great and creative ideas are being generated effortlessly.

The reality is we have created an environment in America’s offices that is much like the 1950′s, with the exception of the smoking and Fedora hats. Everyone sat side by side in desks clacking away on an ancient but trusty device known as a typewriter.

Today, we click and clack on that same keyboard layout, but now it’s plugged into computers that help us hold the precious knowledge that our workers create. I feel like we are worshiping at the idol of collaboration again in the 2000s, but now with better indoor air quality, fancier coffee machines and sans the hats.
What kind of workplace should we be creating?

Have we gone too far with this open-plan thing? Because I can’t hear myself think.

Dude, did you grow or did they shrink your bowl?

I attended a fascinating panel on the emerging privacy crisis at the recent CoreNet Global meeting in Washington, D.C. By the way, CoreNet Global is one of the worlds leading real estate trade associations and the folks in attendance know a thing or two about workplace.

One of the major themes emerging out of the office focused real estate meeting is a renewed commitment to employee wellness by U.S. companies. I think that companies are realizing that there is a logical end to how dense our office environments can be. When you put alot of people in very close proximity for an extended period of time, all kinds of unintended consquences can occur. Privacy is and should be an offshoot of that discussion as we continue to ask people to work in those increasingly dense offices environments.

In the United States, the amount of space allocated per employee has gone from an average of a generous 500 square feet per person in the ‘70′s, to 225 square feet in the early 2000′s to 176 feet per person in 2012, according to CoreNet Global research. And guess what, it’s forecasted to drop to a claustrophobia-inducing 100 feet per person in 2017. I’m well aware that those stats assume a modicum of “unassigned workspace” (read many people and know commited place to work), but the pendulum has swung about as far as I think it can go. Plus buildings have a limit to their ability to accomidate the masses as my coleague at C&W wrote in this blog.

Am I really supposed to be productive while listening to Coldplay all day, everyday?

Should I bother the dude with headphones in his ears? Maybe I’ll just text him!

It’s quiet now, but just wait.

Workers, trying to please their bosses and do well in their 360 reviews, have tried to adapt to this new world. Many workplaces now comprise of folks sitting side by side in “benching” configurations with ear buds in their ears. Pumping John Legend in your own personal concert kind of dampens the whole collaboration thing. But it does provide the illusion of privacy and lets folks around you know that you are really focused — on the latest musical masterpiece.

A major issue in these dense environments is the constant distraction of others near you. You can barely hear yourself think in some office settings.

According to a study by the University of California, colleagues or digital interference interrupts office workers as often as every 3 minutes. The study tells us what many know: once an interruption occurs, it can take up to 23 minutes to reengage in a focused, heads-down problem.

Definition of Privacy

Offices Don’t Solve Every Privacy Problem

I’ll admit it, I have an office bias in that I think offices are the key to happiness and productivity. My friend Coy Davidson wrote a blog agreeing with this idea recently called Give Me My Office Back.

But the presenters at CoreNet think a little differently. Officials at the furniture purveyor Steelcase made the convincing case that we actually have different space needs during the day and offices don’t solve them. At different times, we need places in which to collaborate, go heads down, or to recharge.

They also did a nice job in their report entitled The Privacy Crisis, describing what privacy in the workplace actually is: “mechanisms that regulate privacy in the physical setting: acoustical, visual, territorial and informational. In other words, privacy in any setting is determined by what you hear, what you see, how you define your boundaries and/or what kind of information is revealed and concealed.”

They described at least three major types of privacy:

Anonymity — soaking up the energy of Starbucks but appreciating the anonymity, which means little to no interruptions.Self Protection — using devices like headphones to ward off others.Purposeful Solitude — going outside or grabbing an office

Of course, no single office space can provide the perfect balance of collaboration and privacy.

“Achieving the right balance between privacy and collaboration is fundamentally about empowering individuals with choices and some measure of control over their environment,” says the report. “But when workers can choose from a palette of place — an ecosystem of interrelated zones and settings that support their physical, cognitive and emotional needs — they can draw inspiration and energy from others as well as be restored by the calm of privacy.”

It’s The Productivity, Stupid

Let’s collaborate on those profits

Collaboration is needed more than ever in our rapidly changing world. So is the need to actually do heads-down work. Corporate real estate leaders are coming to grips with the fact that CFO’s will no longer see huge savings in real estate budgets. Those savings, which materialized from a distressed market and densifying spaces, are clearly a thing of the past.

CoreNet Global themed their D.C. conference “Changing the Conversation from Cost to Value.” I certainly agree with this approach for 2014 and beyond.

My coda to that theme is this: “Productivity is the new holy grail.”

As an industry, we have to get beyond the square-footage ratios and fancy metrics. Instead, we have to empower our workforce and create environments that allow them to achieve this true holy grail.

This is hard, because there is no one right answer for every organization. My admonition to you is to be thoughtful about creating new spaces in the future. They may need to be “agile” (read: changeable) over a 10-year or longer lease term.

Work with architects who can demonstrate they understand productivity-enhancing workplaces. Spend time with forward-thinking furniture purveyors who have real solutions. Make your building decisions with the end in mind.

The nickels we save on extreme real estate densification may well cost us many dollars in coming years.

January 26, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

The Benefits of a Lunch Hour Walk
To combat afternoon slumps in enthusiasm and focus, take a walk during the lunch hour.A new study finds that even gentle lunchtime strolls can perceptibly — and immediately — buoy people’s moods and ability to handle stress at work. www.nytimes.com

Co-Working on Vacation: A Desk in Paradise
Hotels and resorts have long catered to travelers who cannot disengage from their jobs. But increasingly there is a new option for those who need to work, but who also want the benefits of a vacation. These new centers are an offshoot of co-working spaces, which offer the benefits of an office environment on a temporary basis. But they also provide a place to sleep, have fun and mingle with colleagues — not in humdrum office parks, but in exotic locations around the world, in the European countryside close to urban centers or in warm-weather destinations like Bali. Call it the busman’s holiday for the digital age. www.nytimes.com

The Problem Isn’t Openness in the Office, It’s Noise
Even to its inventor, the cubicle was not the answer. Designed by Robert Propst in the 1960s, the Action Office system provided modular furniture and movable walls to give workers more control over their environment and encourage interaction. What corporate America ultimately implemented was quite the opposite, as the partitions of office “cells” are so frequently fixed in place. Even Propst later said: “The cubicle-izing of people in modern corporations is monolithic insanity.” www.nytimes.com

Stop Checking Email So Often
IS email overload bad for you? This is a complicated question. Although researchers have found a correlation between dealing with email and adverse well-being (for example, feeling stressed or emotionally drained), this does not mean that email itself is necessarily the culprit. (Perhaps a busier work schedule is what causes stress — and spending lots of time on email is a mere artifact of a busier work schedule.) Furthermore, such research suggests that, even if email is the culprit, the sheer volume of email that people handle might not be the problem. www.nytimes.com

I, like you, have read much of the coverage on recent oil price swings including Saturday’s Wall Street Journalreport which discusses the fact that energy has gotten our economy through the economic malaise of the past couple of years. It’s simply amazing that crude oil prices have fallen almost 50% since June in the United States. Sub $60 a barrel oil will impact all, some for better and some for worse. Is there cause for a Petro Panic, as a recent Wall Street Journalarticle mused?

The shifting of the global tectonic energy plates got me thinking and wondering: What does it all mean globally, for the US economy, and of course for US office real estate?

What are the effects likely to be on the global economy?

As I read article after article, I started with the big picture. In a recent report entitled “As oil prices plunge, (there will be) wide-ranging effects for consumers and the global economy.” The Washington Post explored the global impacts: “Tumbling oil prices are draining hundreds of billions of dollars from the coffers of oil-rich exporters and oil companies and injecting a much-needed boost for ailing economies in Europe and Japan — and for American consumers at the start of the peak shopping season.” The Post continues…”the result could be one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history, potentially reshaping everything from talks over Iran’s nuclear program to the Federal Reserve’s policies to further rejuvenate the U.S. economy.”

Overall, I think that lower oil prices are good news for the global economy, with the obvious exception of effects on the oil industry itself. However, large oil producing nations are also getting swept up in the party. According to Economist Magazine, “Russia’s currency is at a record low, falling below 60 rubles to the dollar on December 15th and Indonesia’s rupiah is at its weakest for six years.” [Also check out The Economists Magazine’s interesting article on Why Oil Prices are Falling so quickly].

On the global scale there are clearly going to be winners and many losers and maybe even a new world economic order.

What about the United States?

I’d start by saying it’s been great to see the boom in US production. I can remember only a few years ago reading about $20 a gallon gas predictions and forecasts that we had reached peak oil. As recently as June of this year, USA Today reported only 53 years of oil left. That sounds like a bad party joke today, but does demonstrate how much misinformation swirls on this subject.

Even if we thought the foreign gas tank was headed towards empty, the good old USA came through. US domestic oil production has boomed due to technological innovations – gushes the BBC. “The growth of oil production in North America, particularly in the US, has been staggering,” says Columbia University’s Jason Bordoff. Speaking to BBC World Service’s World Business Report, he said that US oil production levels are at their highest levels in almost 30 years.

One of the significant drivers in lower prices globally has occurred because of this growth in US energy production, where gas and oil is extracted from shale formations using hydraulic fracturing. While I certainly realize that the use of fracking is politically charged, it’s amazingly effective at recovering previously unreachable oil stores. “(Fracking and) Shale have essentially severed the linkage between geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East, and oil price and equities,” says Seth Kleinman, head of energy strategy at Citi in the BBC report.

Combine the increased US production, lower global demand for oil and the fact that OPEC keeps on pumping and you’ll begin to get a sense of why we are where we are today.

What about employment?

Jobs are, of course, are the protein of real estate powering the industry’s growth. When strong employment growth exists, as it does currently in the US, real estate executives have a pep in their step and increasingly a jingle in their pocket.

In a report from this year, Mark P. Mills a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute says “Overall, nearly 1 million Americans work directly in the oil & gas industry, and a total of 10 million jobs are associated with that industry.” Mills says the oil industry has been a huge creator of middle class jobs since the end of the Great Recession. Given that the US non-farm payroll now exceeds 140 million jobs, we are talking about 7% of the US workforce.

It’s a little early to know what will happen to energy jobs in the United States. It does appear that we are headed for leaner times in the oil patch, but most analyst talk about job losses in the thousands, which is relatively small compared to the overall economy.

A silver lining is beginning to appear: wages in that red hot sector may finally moderate. Labor shortages in North Dakota and Texas have been epic and in certain pockets have driven wages at even low skilled workers through the roof. The oil boom reduced unemployment in North Dakota to 3.5 percent, the lowest of any state in the US. It may now be a lot easier to get a hotel room and cheaper to eat a Big Mac in Minot, North Dakota in 2015.

US CRE

What about the sticks and bricks?

On the national level, the headlines read like an overstated report of a first date in high school: “Low Oil Prices! Low Interest Rates and Plenty of Jobs.” This holiday season, many CRE are jumping for joy like an adolescent getting ready for his first date.

The fact is the US economic expansion, which is now boosted even more by low energy cost, is resulting in strong real estate leasing fundamentals. We are witnessing the first real rental growth for the first time since the downturn began in the mid 2000’s.

Tenants, who pay for the party, are seeing huge increases in cost in almost real time. According to a recent Cushman & Wakefield report, double-digit rental growth is forecast for Boston, San Francisco, New York and Seattle. In fact, most U.S. markets in the study are expected to see modest increases with the slowest growth occurring in Atlanta and Chicago. Even Washington D.C. and Los Angeles will see rents rise in 2015 and 2016.

Oh, and the US is the bell at the ball for global real estate investors. A torrent of capital from all corners of the globe is pouring into US towers.

In a recent National Real Estate Investorarticle, Tim Wang director and head of investment research with real estate investment management firm Clarion Partners LLC said, “Across the globe, there is uncertainty everywhere, making the West appear as a shining star,” and “many investors see the U.S. as a growth story, and they also see stability and safety. We are attracting much more off-shore capital.”

So, here’s my take on all this:

The business conflagration resulting from low interest rates, low energy costs, and strong US business fundamentals in many industries will put a smile on many faces in the months to come. However, this happy emotion won’t come without a cost in some industries and areas of the US. It will also cause significant inflation in the real estate world in terms of cost to lease and purchase real estate assets in the US.

Hard hit areas like Texas and North Dakota will be impacted. Most relevant to office real estate, Dallas and Houston will see growth moderate. I am hearing that some investor have already “red lined” Houston, which until a month or so was one of the hottest markets in the nation.

Service sector companies that touch the energy business will have a tepid start to 2015. Law firms, accountants, oil services and others supporting oil that have been hiring with a big appetite will push back from the table for the time being.

On a more positive note, in many US Cities, 2015 will be the year of the crane – the construction crane as developers of every ilk will finally convince bankers to let them proceed. Santa was especially good to real estate developers, architects and contractors this Christmas.

Despite mighty efforts to densify with new officing schemes, many US business will take more space in 2015 and 2016 than they have for the past five years. The resulting demand will apply even more pressure on major metros that are seeing tighter and tighter availability. The net result? The cost to occupy office space is headed up in a big way.

Overall, lower priced oil is great news for our broader economy, which I imagine has a big tooth grin at the prospect of lower energy costs.

On the real estate front, watch your step in 2015. If you are responsible for your company’s real estate needs, budget big for new offices and be prepared to move with speed to secure deals, because the competition for space will become intense in many US cities.

So, unless you work on an oil derrick, there’s no cause for panic as far as I can see. In fact, go and buy yourself something nice with this year’s bonus; you can tell your spouse that 2015 is going to be a great year. Plus, you deserve it, don’t you?

January 12, 2015

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Advice for Dealing with a Long-Winded Leader
It can be tricky to tell people that they talk too much. And in cases where the offender is someone more powerful, like a senior executive or important customer, it can be downright risky. As a result, many “victims” have been suffering in silence for years in meetings that never end or conversations that drain the life out of them. As the saying goes, a rich man’s jokes are always funny. www.hbr.com

3 workplace trends to watch for in 2015 (and beyond)
Artificial intelligence will rock the job market, your company will need a Chief of Work, and cubicle farms will disappear. Why real estate? Simple: Many big commercial clients sign leases for a quarter century or more into the future, so the industry keeps an eye on how work, and the places where we do it, are most likely to evolve. www.fortune.com

Congress Renews Terrorist Insurance Act Giving Safety Net to CRE Industry
One of the first acts of the newly installed Congress was to extend the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) for another six years. The act, which was the subject of intense lobbying efforts by industry representatives, was viewed as a significant policy tool against the potential economic fallout resulting from an act of terrorism and had provided a degree of certainty to commercial real estate investors. www.costar.com

The 10 Coolest Office Spaces Of 2014
Fluorescent-lit cubicles are so last century. The latest in corporate office design is about creating more than just a place for employees to sit and stare at their computers, and the Googles of the world aren’t the only companies investing in awesome office spaces (though Google continues to build zany offices all over the world). www.fastcodesign.com

Clashing Over Office Clutter With more employees working in open-plan offices and shared workspaces, look for more clashes over clutter. The average space allotted per worker has dropped as much as 21% since 1997, according to the International Facility Management Association in Houston. Storage space is shrinking too, and not everyone is keeping up with the push for a paperless office.www.wsj.com

January 5th, 2015

Happy New Year! I wish you all the best and hope you have the most successful year ever!

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science/leadership and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them).

Google Got it Wrong. The Open-Office Trend is Destroying the Workplace.
These new floor plans are ideal for maximizing a company’s space while minimizing costs. Bosses love the ability to keep a closer eye on their employees, ensuring, constant social media-browsing and unlimited personal cellphone use isn’t occupying billing hours. But employers are getting a false sense of improved productivity. A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Meanwhile, “ease of interaction” with colleagues — the problem that open offices profess to fix — was cited as a problem by fewer than 10 percent of workers in any type of office setting. www.washingtonpost.com

Technology’s Impact on WorkersA Pew research study: the internet and cell phones have infiltrated every cranny of American workplaces, and digital technology has transformed vast numbers of American jobs. Work done in the most sophisticated scientific enterprises, entirely new technology businesses, the extensive array of knowledge and media endeavors, the places where crops are grown, the factory floor, and even mom-and-pop stores has been reshaped by new pathways to information and new avenues of selling goods and services. For most office workers now, life on the job means life online.www.pewinternet.org

8 Facilities Management Blog You will Actually Enjoy Reading
As you settle back into routine, consider adding a few FM blogs to your list of morning reading material. Building up the blocks of your FM knowledge is a critical part of working in this demanding industry. However, it’s not all exactly interesting or honestly even worth your time. We’ve rounded-up eight of our favorite FM blogs, that won’t put you back to sleep before your morning coffee. www.iOfficecorp.com

November 11, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

How to Spend the Last 10 Minutes of Your DaySince most of us can’t sleep later in the morning than we currently do, the only option is to get to bed earlier. And yet we don’t. Why? The reason is twofold. First, we’re so busy during the day that the only time we have to ourselves is late in the evening – so we stay up late because it’s our only downtime. Second, we have less willpower when we’re tired, which makes it tougher to force ourselves into bed. www.hbr.com

Inside The Phenomenal Rise Of WeWork
WeWork’s founders have been content to stay quiet about their story until now, swearing investors to secrecy. No longer. Over the next 12 months the company expects to triple its membership from 14,000 to 46,000 and expand to 60 locations from 21 today and 9 just a year ago. www.forbes.com

November 4th, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Tailor Your Presentation to Fit the CultureNo matter which type of country you were raised in, and which cultures you are working with, it helps a lot to be able to adapt your style according to your audience. Here are a few tips to guide your preparation when working internationally. www.hbr.com

As Good As It Gets? Office Market Moving Into Sweet Spot In RecoveryConditions in the U.S. office market are aligning in a way that office investors have dreamed about. A serendipitous combination of falling vacancy, rising net absorption and a controlled supply of new office space is creating broad-based opportunities to increase rents and reap higher property incomes on their office property investments. www.costar.com

The Downside of Generous Workplace Perks Do all these perks do what they’re supposed to — that is, attract, retain and motivate employees? Dr. Ledford said there wasn’t much good research in the area, but that while such extras might attract and even help retain employees, it didn’t show it motivates them.www.NYTimes.com

Stop People from Wasting Your Time Sometimes it’s hard to escape, especially when the time-waster is your boss (one friend recalls a supervisor who “called meetings just to tell long, rambling stories about her college years” and would “chastise anyone who tried to leave and actually perform work”). But in many other situations, you can take steps to regain control of your time and your schedule. Here’s how. www.hbr,org

October 21, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Getting People to Believe in Something They Can’t Yet Imagine
Gaining support for an idea for which people have no point of reference is a huge challenge for innovators. It is hard to win over someone who cannot see what you see. Traditional influencing theory — as expounded, for example, by Robert Cialdini in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — offers “invoking authority” as a way to persuade others to support things that are new to them. If you are a recognized expert in the field, your audience may trust that you know what you are talking about even if they don’t exactly understand it themselves. Often, however, truly groundbreaking innovation comes from people that do not yet have a track record of success. www.hbr.com

Malcolm Gladwell on What Really Makes People Disruptive
When people talk about what it takes to transform a field or a world, they leave out one crucial component, best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell told the audience at the World Business Forum on Tuesday. “What’s really behind it?” he said. “What are the preconditions that make that kind of change possible?” www.inc.com

October 14th, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Please Stop Complaining About How Busy You Are
My favorite “busy” humble-brag was that of a potential client who apologized for lack of communication due to a “week-long fire drill.” What does that even mean? Does this mean there were fake fires, but not real ones, all week? Does calling it a “drill” mean that everything is okay? Is your business in flames? Should I call someone? www.hbr.com

The Freelance Economy Still Runs on Word of Mouth
We may well be entering a new age of work, in which tasks can be sliced into bite-sized chunks and allotted online to freelancers all over the planet. But we’re not quite there yet, according to a new survey conducted for MBO Partners, which provides back-office services to independent workers — which it dubs “solopreneurs.” Independent workers still get the vast majority of their assignments through the old-fashioned channel of word of mouth, and this is even more pronounced for the most successful among them. www.hbr.com

Workers Should Help Design the Workspace
When I envision the workplace of the future, it looks a lot like my couch, only with several soft-serve ice-cream machines attached and a rather handsome (though not more handsome than I am) robot doing my work.

Call me a dreamer if you wish, but don’t mock the exercise of pondering the ideal workspace. If we, the workers, don’t imagine and describe the surroundings that best serve our needs, then someone in charge will undoubtedly decide what’s best, build it and plop us in place. www.chicagotribune.com

To your success, Ken

]]>http://commercialtenantresource.com/2014/10/14/bookmarks-5-interesting-articles-to-help-you-this-week-13/feed/0Serenity Now!http://commercialtenantresource.com/2014/10/02/serenity-now/
http://commercialtenantresource.com/2014/10/02/serenity-now/#commentsThu, 02 Oct 2014 11:16:36 +0000http://commercialtenantresource.com/?p=3852This is the second in a three part series on critical components for success in a new building scenario. This post deals with high level issues in planning and designing the new construction. You can find the first post here.

If you are a fan of Seinfeld, which was one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, you’ll smile that knowing smile when you read the headline to this blog. If the headline doesn’t mean anything to you, then you must be a Millennial.

See, it works! Look at the smile!

You can see some of the episode by clicking here, but the quick summary of the hilarious plot is that character Frank Costanza is advised by a psychologist on a cassette to softly utter the words “serenity now” when he feels his blood pressure going up. Frank is utterly deranged and very quick to anger. When his wife picks at him in one particular scene, he loudly screams “serenity now, serenity now!” in an improbable and week attempt to calm himself down. It’s a very funny Hollywood take on trying to deal with a stressful situation.

Why Do I Need Serenity?

What does this have to do with real estate, you may be asking?

Conducting a major office move is one of the more stressful things one can do in corporate America. Joining a project that involves new construction can take the needle to the limit. Creating a new office building can feel like herding long tail cats across a porch full of rocking chairs. Hang on!

And unless you think this is not reality for you and your company, the US Office Market in many cities is reaching near historic occupancy with only a fraction of buildings on the drawing boards compared to last cycle. Many people in corporate real estate will realize with a sinking feeling that they will indeed have to build.

What follows are some high-level tips to help you as you begin thinking about all that is involved in the new building.

Start Early

From the time that plans are approved, many urban office buildings can take 18-24 months to construct. Suburban buildings are usually 12-14 months. In addition, you have all the planning and permitting leading up to the actual construction. We would advise anyone with a significant office need (say 3 floors or 75,000 and greater) to allow 4-5 years lead time on new construction.

I know it is hard to see that far out, but one of the critical success factors in the new construction world is allowing time to “fail.” Put another way, if you are working through your planning and due diligence with a particular developer and the deal falls apart, you need time to start again with another group.

Clear Vision – Space and Building

If corporate real estate were a simple commodity, then I wouldn’t have a job. Neither would architects for that matter. But both brokers and architects are pretty darn busy just now.

Because the choice of facades, building systems and amenity packages are seemingly infinite, assembling a strong team of advisers will help you develop a “sanity check” against options that don’t align with your corporate vision. Good design professionals can take you through a “programming” exercise that will help evaluate what the interior of your office should look like as well as exterior designs that fit in culturally.

I heard one landlord say just today that “granite is dead” when discussing Millennial workers. What exactly is alive is something that your team will be able to assess given the particulars of your own unique situation.

Pivot Up/Pivot Down

You are now planning to occupy a building 4-5 years out, and the developer will want you to sign a 10-15 year lease. That is a LONG horizon into the future.

I recently heard a major accounting firm real estate lead say that they anticipate changing the use of their office every 3-5 years. Since they did away with almost all their offices, this really means changing the furniture solution.

This is well and good, but what happens if your headcount dramatically swings up or down in that interminably long window? Early in the deal is the time to negotiate termination and expansion options with favorable terms. During the dark days of 2009, we could often get landlords to commit to a pivot of plus or minus 20%. Those days are a distant memory (nightmare?) now, but if you have any hope of getting flexibility in your lease, be very clear and specific in your first RFP document. One you get “engaged” – or even close to it – all bets are off.

Check your Wallet

Construction costs are causing havoc on budgets and they will continue to rise for years to come. Even the tightest bid from a contractor will only be good for a relatively short period of time. I’d suggest that you carefully manage expectations internally to your senior leadership or board about the cost of new construction. In fact, for internal only budgets, you might consider adding a large contingency factor for increases in constructed improvements. Ask your team to “ladder” the impact of cost increase of 5, 10 and even 15% on your rent obligation.

Timeout Box for the Developer, Too

One of the favorite tactics of landlords is to spell out the 100,000 ways that a tenant can default on its obligations to the landlord, but seemingly forget to identify what happens if the landlord fails to perform. Don’t be a victim here. A general counsel I worked with on a large headquarters project would challenge his team to “awfulize.” He wanted everyone to pull apart the deal and think of what could go wrong on schedule, construction defects, and permits; really everything. Then we would plan contingencies around the failures.

Fundamental to success here is to not only identify what could go wrong, but what happens to the developer if, through no fault of the tenant, the project encounters rough seas. Knowing in advance what the stick is can help the friendly development team focus.

Signage?

We’ve represented many large users over the years with significant brand management needs. Most everyone can picture their company logo glistening on the monument sign out front or even lauding over the city from the top of the building. I could write a whole blog on this one subject, but some major categories of signage blunders include: municipal code compliance, the rights of other tenants to prevent your sign from going up, what happens to your signage rights if you contract or sublease, the ability to change the sign if you change your name or logo, and your access to change light bulbs and clean the sign.

The moral to this story is to not be lulled into sleep by the developer’s statement that a sign is “no problem.” Hire the right attorneys and other advisors to protect you and your mighty brand.

Thanks for the Joy Ride, Ashley

I hope you won’t need a shrink or a priest after your new building project is completed. Maybe watching Frank Costanza’s hapless expression of psychic longing will do the trick instead.

September 30th, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Workers should help design workplace
Call me a dreamer if you wish, but don’t mock the exercise of pondering the ideal workspace. If we, the workers, don’t imagine and describe the surroundings that best serve our needs, then someone in charge will undoubtedly decide what’s best, build it and plop us in place. www.chicagotribune.com

Managing People from 5 Generations
For the first time in history, five generations will soon be working side by side. But whether this multi-generational workplace feels happy and productive or challenging and stressful is, in large part, up to you: the boss. How should you relate to employees of different age groups? How do you motivate someone much older or much younger than you? And finally: what can you do to encourage employees of different generations to share their knowledge? www.hbr.org

Why Millennials Are Ending The 9 To 5
The 9 to 5 job may soon be a relic of the past, if Millennials have their way. A slow climb in a company was once the accepted career path. However, today the experiences of men and women starting their careers are closer to juggling multiple positions than steady growth. www.forbes.com

5 Easy Ways to Become a Better Public Speaker — Fast
Speaking at events is a great way to enhance your status as an expert and generate PR for your business. However, becoming a great speaker is an art, not a science. The good news is that with some tips and some practice, you can leave a lasting impression that you will want people to remember. www.entrepreneur.com

September 17th, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Balancing “We” and “Me”: The Best Collaborative Spaces Also Support Solitude
The open plan is just one of the culprits assaulting our privacy. The increased focus on collaborative work means we’re rarely alone, and the ubiquity of mobile devices means we’re always accessible. In light of these pressures, it’s not surprising that the number of people who say they can’t concentrate at their desk has increased by 16% since 2008, and the number of those who don’t have access to quiet places to do focused work is up by 13%. Meanwhile, people are finding it harder to control who has access to their personal information, at work and elsewhere. www.hbr.com

Trio of San Francisco Tower Sales Affirm Torrid Office Market
San Francisco’s office market is poised to stay on its torrid pace. The number of signed office leases or active requirements in the market for 100,000 square feet or more is set to surpass the dot-com boom, when nine such lease deals were signed totaling more than 2.5 million square feet. Despite more than five million square feet of office space under construction, the new supply will fall drastically short of the current demand for space given pre-leasing activity and the relative lack of large blocks of available space. www.costar.com

The Evolution Of The Employee
Work as we know it is dead and that the only way forward is to challenge convention around how we work, how we lead, and how we build our companies. Employees which were once thought of expendable cogs are the most valuable asset that any organization has. However, the employee from a decade ago isn’t the same as the employee who we are starting to see today. www.forbes.com

The Magic in Apple’s Devices? The HeartAfter the big announcement last week, you didn’t need a watch from the future to know what time it was: Apple had done it again. By choosing the same site where Mr. Jobs announced the Macintosh computer 30 years ago, and by archly referring to “one more thing” — a Jobs tic when breaking big news — Tim Cook, the chief executive, directly embraced his legacy and sent a message that the company still had magical properties. www.nytimes.com

September 9th, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Futurist Predicts How Gen Z-ers Will Work
In the past five years or so, we’ve seen the traditional office—the Dilbert world of fixed cubicles, all lined up in numbing monotony—begin to disappear. We have left the Baby Boomer era of office design behind and are well on our way into the work world of Generation Y. Part of this change is due to how rapidly technology has untethered us from traditional office space. But change has also been driven by the preferred work style of Generation Y, which is much more collaborative and motivated by the need for social connection. At the office, they demand choice—over the location of their work and the options of spaces to use. www.metropolismag.com

The Evolution Of The Employee
Work as we know it is dead and that the only way forward is to challenge convention around how we work, how we lead, and how we build our companies. Employees which were once thought of expendable cogs are the most valuable asset that any organization has. www.forbes.com

How to Write The Perfect Tweet
80% of B2B companies are using Twitter, reports Brafton research. Are these companies tweeting in a way to increase awareness, engage customers and move buyers toward conversion? You need to be able to talk the talk of the customer to sell or to market to them effectively. www.linkedin.org

Caffeine: The Silent Killer of Success
This week’s tip for improving your performance is the most simple and straightforward method I’ve provided thus far. For many people, this tip has the potential to have a bigger impact than any other single action. The catch? You have to cut down on caffeine, and as any caffeine drinker can attest, this is easier said than done. www.linkedin.com

September 2, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

End the Tyranny of 24/7 Email
This is basic behavioral economics. When email is seen as an infinite resource, people abuse it. If a corporation constrains its use, each message becomes more valuable — and employees become more mindful of how and when they write. www.nytimes.com

5 Tips for Off-the-Cuff Speaking
If it’s true that many people fear public speaking more than death, it’s equally true that businesspeople are condemned to a thousand small deaths in client pitches, in boardrooms, and on stage. And that death can turn slow and torturous when you are asked to speak unexpectedly with little or no time to prepare. One of the key demands of business is the ability to speak extemporaneously. Whether giving an unexpected “elevator pitch” to a potential investor or being asked at the last minute to offer remarks to a sales team over dinner, the demands for a business person to speak with limited preparation are diverse, endless, and — to many — terrifying. This article has some great tips on how to overcome the fear. www.hbr.com

How New York is Building its Behemoth New Bridge
Twenty miles north of New York City, something loud and historic is happening. For the first time in a half-century New York is building a new bridge—a 3.1-mile, $3.9 billion span over the Hudson River. And, this being New York, it’s gotta be big. Real big. If you count the 40-foot gap for a possible future commuter rail between the spans (and we do), this will be one of the widest bridges in the world. It will be an accomplishment and a centerpiece—and, best of all, it won’t need major repairs for at least 100 years. www.popularmechanics.org

August 26, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Amazon: From the Back of Bezo’s SUV to 100 Million Square Feet
“Nineteen years ago, I drove the Amazon packages to the post office every evening in the back of my Chevy Blazer. My vision extended so far that I dreamed we might one day get a forklift,” the president and CEO of the e-commerce giant said in a recent letter to shareholders. “Fast-forward to today and we have 96 fulfillment centers and are on our seventh generation of fulfillment center design.” www.costar.com

How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management
Google downplays hierarchy and emphasizes the power of the individual in its recruitment efforts, as well, to achieve the right cultural fit. Using a rigorous, data-driven hiring process, the company goes to great lengths to attract young, ambitious self-starters and original thinkers. It screens candidates’ résumés for markers that indicate potential to excel there—especially general cognitive ability. People who make that first cut are then carefully assessed for initiative, flexibility, collaborative spirit, evidence of being well-rounded, and other factors that make a candidate “Googley.” www.hbr.com

Quicker Ways to Digitize Old PhotographsA problem many (including yours truly) need to solve: Flatbed scanners are not the only option for converting prints to digital files. Depending on your resources, quicker methods may be available. For instance, Kodak’s Picture Saver Scanning System uses sheet-fed scanners and software to digitize 50 to 85 photos a minute for high-volume conversion. www.nytimes.com

How to Create a Blog Plan for Any Type of Book
Creating a plan to tell the masses about your soon to be best seller: Too many aspiring and published authors blogging in a scattered manner. They write about whatever topic comes to mind or moves them on a particular day. They assume an author blog provides an opportunity to spout off about whatever is on their minds and that their adoring fans care to read these thoughts. And they might…assuming these writers already have adoring fans. www.thebookdesigner.com

August 19, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

Composite CRE Price Index Flirting With Prerecession High
U.S. Composite Index as calculated by CoStar, driven by the impact of larger, core property sales, increased 2.3% in the second quarter of 2014 and was up 9.7% for the 12-month period through June 2014. Although it dipped slightly in June, the index is approaching its prerecession highs in 2007. www.costar.com

What’s Up With That: Why It’s So Hard to Catch Your Own Typos
Typos suck. They are saboteurs, undermining your intent, causing your resume to land in the “pass” pile, or providing sustenance for an army of pedantic critics. Frustratingly, they are usually words you know how to spell, but somehow skimmed over in your rounds of editing. If we are our own harshest critics, why do we miss those annoying little details? www.wired.org

Your Office Is Plotting to Kill You (Infographic)Sit for much of the day and you won’t just get fatter; as Jessica Stillman notes, it can also make you dumber. Sit for more than six hours a day and you are 18% more likely to die from diabetes, heart disease, and obesity than people who sit less than three hours a day. www.inc.com

Work + Home + Community + Self
A commitment to better “work/life balance” isn’t the solution. As I’ve argued for a long time—and as many more people are now asserting—balance is bunk. It’s a misguided metaphor because it assumes we must always make trade-offs among the four main aspects of our lives: work or school, home or family (however you define that), community (friends, neighbors, religious or social groups), and self (mind, body, spirit). A more realistic and more gratifying goal is better integration between work and the rest of life through the pursuit of four-way wins, which improve performance in all four dimensions. www.harvardbiz.com

August 12, 2014

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four “corners:” corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!

The Shiny Penny
Buying real estate development services is not like buying a car. This is no commodity product purchase. Instead, it’s a highly customized service and a relationship that will have to stand the test for many months to come through thick and thin. Investing time now will pay big dividends at the next important step for your new facility – when the Board attends the ribbon cutting!

The Best Leaders “Talk the Walk”
One of the most ubiquitous aphorisms in business is that the best leaders understand the need to “walk the talk” — that is, their behavior and day-to-day actions have to match the aspirations they have for their colleagues and organization. But the more time I spend with game-changing innovators and high-performing companies, the more I appreciate the need for leaders to “talk the walk” — that is, to be able to explain, in language that is unique to their field and compelling to their colleagues and customers, why what they do matters and how they expect to win.www.hbr.com

I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days. Here’s What It Did to Me
I like everything. Or at least I did, for 48 hours. Literally everything Facebook sent my way, I liked—even if I hated it. I decided to embark on a campaign of conscious liking, to see how it would affect what Facebook showed me. I know this sounds like a stunt (and it was) but it was also genuinely just an open-ended experiment. I wasn’t sure how long I’d keep it up (48 hours was all I could stand) or what I’d learn (possibly nothing.). www.wired.com

Lyft Hopes to Convince Commuters to Leave Their Cars
Demand for talented software engineers is as high as ever, with companies throwing huge salaries and perks at new employees gravitating toward consumer-focused businesses ranging from leviathans such as Google (GOOG) to buzzier, smaller outfits like Snapchat. But rising expectations from some employers also mean expectations are reaching stratospheric levels. www.Fortune.com

The Board has authorized you to proceed with the new building option. All those hours of hard work have finally paid off. The Chair has a big smile on her face as the vote is taken, and thumbs up were evident around the table. You are elated as you walk out of the meeting. Clearly, a good meal and glass of something nice is in order.

Worth every penny.Photo credit: iStock

But as you head back to brief the troops on the good news, it finally hits you. The developer better perform or you will experience at least a CLM – career limiting move – and, at the worst, your job might end up DRT – dead right there!

Rewind this scenario a bit, and let’s evaluate three critical components for success in any new building scenario. This post will deal with the first one – the company you are actually doing the deal with.

Who’s Your Dance Partner?“Seek first to understand, then be understood,” said the very wise St. Francis of Assisi. I have observed projects where everyone is so wound up on the location, type of product or other inward-focused issues that they forget to question who the real estate execution partner will be. All the pitches are compelling and, boy, the developers these days are sophisticated. How can you go wrong with any of them?

As you evaluate the short-list proposals, realize that the company you pick will likely be a partner for many months and years to come. What if they deliver a shoddy product? What if they can’t deliver on time? What if they anger municipal officials to the point that the project turns into a nightmare and a hundred other questions? This is one of those cases where fear, uncertainty and doubt are the proper, protective emotions.

Some diligence is in order before you move forward. Begin by evaluating the financial structure and ownership behind your proposed transaction.

Major Commercial Real Estate Ownership TypesThere are many derivatives and evolutions of the way investors hold real estate. In the world of major office projects, however, the vast majority of new development is in one of four ownerships.

Life Insurance/Pension Funds

One might think of insurance companies and pension funds for their products. Real estate is a solution for the mountains of cash these companies have to invest. Funds purchase real estate because the yields can be high and, over time, serve as a hedge to the products they sell.

They are highly focused on all elements of the real estate deal that create long-term value, including tenant credit, lease term and rental rate. They are typically more bureaucratic and less likely to stretch toward unusual transactions. Risk of default or failure to perform is usually very low.

REIT’s

Real Estate Investment Trusts are typically publically traded companies that receive special tax considerations. They offer investors high yields, as well as a highly liquid method of investing in real estate. Their revenues come principally from their properties’ rents expressed as “funds from operations” (FFO – calculated by adding depreciation and amortization expenses to earnings, and sometimes quoted on a per-share basis).

REITs, like life insurance companies, are usually flush with cash. They are more likely to be the second owners after the building is developed. A good strategy in working with a REIT is to arrange a guaranteed take out for the developer at the end of the project. They are focused on leased space at the highest rates possible.

Fund developers

There are a number of major national development companies that raise funds for investment from university endowments, very wealthy individuals and other investors. Some of these funds will have an allocation for new construction.

The fund objectives will guide the investment manager, but the combination of cash and development experience can be a good one.

Merchant Developers

Likely the most agile of the bunch, merchant developers will tie up a piece of property – sometimes without even closing – and try to make a deal with you. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but you should be extraordinarily careful to understand the source of the funds for the development.

Cash flow is king in these situations since your developer will want to grip it and rip it (build your building and sell it as soon as possible).

Debt?Some developers will place debt on buildings (i.e. merchant developers), while some will not (insurance companies). Don’t be afraid to ask if there is debt and, importantly, what level of approval any lender may have over your deal. You might have another person looking over the “shoulder” of the deal and not even know it.

We will address tenant credit issues in a future post, but understanding up front how a lender values – or devalues – your credit is really critical and will help with negotiation leverage.

Past is PrologueDiligence on the developer may seem like a rather obvious action, but you would be surprised how often people get moving fast and take a facile approach to this important detail. This is where one can get into real trouble. Just reviewing the numbers without knowing who your development partner really is will not help with those board level back slaps.

When landlords buy buildings, they do so-called “tenant interviews.”

In the case of a tenant evaluating a developer, we suggest not only interviewing the developer but talking to past clients. Work with your real estate broker to develop a detailed and deep list of questions that you will ask all developers and their clients to keep things consistent.

When the interviews are complete, put all the responses in a table and ask your evaluation team to rate each developer in at least the following areas: solidity of financing, flexibility and innovation, on-time delivery, post-delivery follow through, general market reputation and, of course, the financial models of their respective proposals.

Instead of “going with your gut,” you created a formal process and had your team all weigh in. If there ever is a problem, you at least need to have that formal due diligence process to back up your decision making.

Let Me Talk to My Sales ManagerBuying real estate development services is not like buying a car. This is no commodity product purchase. Instead, it’s a highly customized service and a relationship that will have to stand the test for many months to come through thick and thin.

Investing time now will pay big dividends at the next important step for your new facility – when the Board attends the ribbon cutting!

Thanks to Samir Idris of Cushman & Wakefield for your review and advice on this post.